Under Cogwheel and Chaos Star
by Belashkal
Summary: The ongoing story of the 88th Armageddon Steel Legion in their service to the 14th Grand Company of the Iron Warriors
1. The Sound of Drums

_One two three four_

_One two three four  
><em>

It did not matter what he did, the beat never truly stopped.

_One two three four _

_One two three four  
><em>

At first, he had tried to shut it out, ignore it. It hadn't worked. Then, he had tried to alter it, to the point it became non-existent.

_One two _

_One two _

_One two _

_One two  
><em>

That had only distracted him even more, to the point where it became unbearable and any alteration of its rhythm lead him to making mistakes. The problem was, when he made mistakes, hundreds of people, often his own, died.

_One two three four _

_One two three four  
><em>

He was able to counter the mistakes, turning potential losses into victories, but always at a steeper and steeper cost in lives, his own soldiers' and the enemies'. A few weeks ago, a particularly bloody battle which had been decisive in the fulfilment of their mission here on Sycorax, the drumming had suddenly stopped, even if it was just for a few hours. It had returned with renewed vigour afterwards. It was then he had realised what it was and what it wanted.

_You must shed blood _

_You must shed blood_

Just as he had realised that, the order had come through that the regiment was going to pull back, for rest and resupply before they were to be transported off-world. The fools! His place was on the battle-field and his mission was far from completed in his opinion. The drums would not stand for this.

Then there was the issue with that pamphlet he had found. He knew what people most likely had an answer to that... that preposterous thing!

He picked up his micro-bead link from the desk in front of him, which was laden with reports and data-slates.

"Lieutenant Hoss," he said, his voice deep and melodious, sounding clear despite the gasmask he had taken the habit to wear constantly after a stray lasround from a Sycoraxian rebel had hit him in the cheek, leaving a nasty hole there. "Could you send for the Magos and the Father both?"

"Sir," his aide's voice crackled back, "are you certain about that? Considering that Magos Sierck-"

"Are you questioning a direct command, lieutenant?" he asked.

"No, sir," Hoss replied, sounding slightly nervous. "Merely informing you of the... discrepancy, that is all."

"I am aware of it. Now follow orders!"

"Yessir!"

There was a faint click as Lieutenant Hoss signed off.

The Colonel fingered the edges of his eyes delicately, slowly. They were works of art in metal and porcelain: crystal blue irises, with integrated targeting systems as well as a wider spectrum of vision, combined with the at first uncomfortable function to link up with any targeting array under his command, via simple vox link.

Magos Cybernetica Adalbert Sierck was a master at his craft, of that there could be no discussion.

Sierck had given him his eyesight back all those years ago, on Armageddon. It was why he felt he owed Sierck a favour, as things stood. Besides, if the good Father Iosiph failed to deliver, Sierck perhaps had an answer not just to the pamphlet, but to the origins of the drums? 

* * *

><p>Father Iosiph was not cut out for the role as chief regimental priest. True, he had the zealous faith and fiery rhetoric of all of his kind, but he lacked the physical presence. His memories of his home world were few, but he had a distinct recollection of caverns that went on forever and had no sunlight. He was a small, slightly built person, almost rodent-like in his appearance. Even amongst Armageddonians, a slightly built lot overall, he stood out.<p>

He couldn't fathom why the Colonel would summon him to his office, though. The Colonel was an unfriendly sort, unapproachable, yet his soldiers adored him. Iosiph had no doubts to the Colonel's tactical capacities, but he sometimes doubted the man had enough faith. He never interfered the priest in his work, nor any of his colleagues', and that was all fine with Iosiph, as their work essentially took place in two different theatres, as things were.

The regiment had been garrisoned at Sycorax City, the only major settlement on the agri-world of Sycorax, for a few weeks now. The city had held a population of 3 million, but that had been reduced to a scant million after the 88th Steel Legion had laid siege to it. There would be none left when they were done with it. The taint of Chaos ran deep in the city, so deep that High Command, stationed in another part of the sector entirely, had decided that the 88th Steel Legion act as executioners as well as liberators. Iosiph had feared this would cause unrest and disciplinary problems with the 88th, but none had happened. The 88th, true to their motto of total obedience, had carried out the orders to seek and destroy Chaos covens with a vigour that the good father found encouraging. Even if the Colonel was an unapproachable loner, at least his troops were zealous in their work to the Holy God-Emperor on Terra.

Iosiph had made his way to the manse in which the Colonel and his headquarters now resided. He nodded to the aides at work, getting courteous nods back and the occasional smile. The 88th was a large regiment, almost an army in its own right, like most Steel Legions and fully mechanised at that; nearly 30 000 men and women in service to the Holy Throne. Iosiph almost pitied the fool cultists that had dared stand against such blessed might in steel.

As he stopped outside the Colonel's office, he heard a bustling noise down the corridor, and it grew stronger and stronger as it came closer. It didn't take long for him to recognise one of the voices as belonging to Lieutenant Hoss, the Colonel's personal aide. The other voice, higher pitched and speaking in what Iosiph had learned was a Helsreachian accent, was not one he wanted to hear, at all, outside an Inquisitor's holding cell.

"I ask, Lieutenant," the tenor voice complained, "was it necessary to shackle all six? Your plucky Lady Enginseer already disconnected four of them!"

"As far as the Magos is concerned, yes it was," came the reply from Hoss.

Father Iosiph saw as the nearly two metres tall, spindly Magos Sierck was frog-marched towards him by Hoss. He was also flanked by two troopers with black carapace armour and bone-white skull-shaped gasmasks, obviously part of the Colonel's personal bodyguard of the 1st company, the _Stosstruppen_. They held their hellguns across their chests, ready to hose the tech heretic with las should he try to escape.

Iosiph saw what Sierck had referred to: heavy steel shackles bound the Magos' two normal arms together with his four mechadendrites. The bottom two mechadendrites resembled tentacles and the top two were servo-arms with their implements crudely removed, most likely in a hurry to secure the owner.

Sierck frowned at Hoss and then saw Iosiph, waiting at the Colonel's door, and smiled, revealing shiny silver teeth. Iosiph shivered involuntarily. There was something decidedly off about Sierck's face, but Iosiph could not put his finger on what exactly at first. It was as any other face, not very strange at all: a somewhat beaky nose, pronounced cheekbones and a soft, narrow chin on a jaw that had a slight under-bite. Nothing was untoward at all with the face.

Then Iosiph realised it was the eyes. They were the dead eyes of a machine. As if the emotions seen in Sierck's face and heard in his voice were just programmes running their course.

"I see the spiritual peddler is here too!" Sierck said, the smile not leaving his face even as Hoss smacked him over the head with the butt of his laspistol.

Iosiph swallowed his immediate anger before replying: "You'd be best adviced not to mock me and my trade, heretic filth. You will die soon. I can make that happen even sooner, should you continue to-"

"All threat and no substance, you are, father," Sierck interrupted, before being smacked over the head again. "I have seen, and done, things that would make your childish faith in the 'God-Emperor' leave your body at the same time as your piss!"

"Enough!" Hoss snarled and shot Sierck in his right knee. This only served to make the tech heretic buckle over, giggling hysterically. He had got what he wanted out of that brief exchange.

Hoss pulled Sierck upright and pushed him ahead into the Colonel's office. The Magos was still giggling, but it soon faded away. Iosiph followed the soldiers into the Colonel's office, careful to keep a distance between himself and the mad Magos.

Though, he couldn't help but wonder why the Colonel wanted to talk to this heretic filth? Wasn't that the job of an Inquisitor? Iosiph shrugged inwardly, dismissing his doubts. He would find out soon enough. After all, where was the harm in asking?

* * *

><p>The Colonel looked up from the pamphlet he was reading and nodded to his aide. Hoss bustled the Magos into a corner. Father Iosiph demonstrably went to the other end of the room and sat down, without invitation, much to the Colonel's annoyance.<p>

"That'd be all, Lieutenant," the Colonel said to Hoss. "You can leave me with these men."

"But-" Hoss began. He received a hard stare in return.

"That's the second time you question my orders today, Lieutenant. There won't be a third time, am I right?"

Hoss faltered for a second, then nodded, saluted and left with the two bodyguards. The Colonel knew they would be posted just outside his door. Hoss was loyal, just a little too much of a busybody.

"Gentlemen," the Colonel began, "I am a puzzled man. That is not good, as I am supposed to be the commanding officer of this outfit. Thus, any unknown factor is a danger to the security of it." He held up the pamphlet so the other two men could see it. "I want to know, what the frag is this?"

As the Colonel made no move to hand the pamphlet over, Iosiph got out of his chair and walked closer, leaning in to see what it was.

The pamphlet was fairly simple in design, showing a massive hive city with a setting sun behind it, the sun turning the ash wastes below the hive purple, orange and red. It was actually quite beautiful.

It had words on it too: _"Come to Armageddon! Forge a new life on the Imperium's most famous planet! Your future is secure on Armageddon! Fortune and prosperity await!"_

Iosiph looked at the Colonel as he finished reading.

"I don't get it," he said. "It's a mere colonisation pamphlet. A common thing."

The Colonel gave him an odd, appraising look with those icy eyes of his.

"Yes, a colonisation pamphlet. For a hive world with a population of 100 billion? Why?" Iosiph did not have an answer, so he shrugged.

"Maybe it's related to those warp storms I've heard so much about in the last few months?" Sierck said speculatively. "Maybe they finally let up and the results were... unpleasant?"

Iosiph felt his bowels clench in fear as he heard Magos Sierck's voice just behind him. Iosiph was just about to turn and tell the traitorous piece of filth to back off, when he felt something prick into his neck. His legs buckled underneath him and he fell to the ground, paralysed and helpless. He looked up at the seemingly impossibly tall magos. Sierck's hands were free from their shackles, though the mechadendrites were still unable to move. Why wasn't the Colonel trying to stop the heretic? Why hadn't he called for Hoss and the guards?

Sierck leaned down, pinching Iosiph at a particular nerve cluster in his neck. Everything went black for the preacher.

* * *

><p>The Colonel looked idly at Sierck as the spindly magos undid the last of his shackles and started to reconnect his mechadendrites to his internal power supply. As the Magos was working with that, and eventually obviously struggling with a few couplings, the Colonel reached into one of his desk drawers and pulled out a silvery stylus-like tool, though instead of a writing nub it had what looked like a light at the end of it. It took the Colonel a second to realise he only saw the light because of his expanded visual spectrum. It had a very particular blue colour. He handed the tool over to Sierck.<p>

"I thought you might need that," he said as way of explanation. Sierck took it with a short nod of thanks and continued to repair himself. "Though, I must say, I expected you to be free earlier, my dear Magos Sierck."

Sierck gave an odd smile. "It would have been easier with my trusty sonic omni-tool here. I had to make do with my fingers."

The Colonel picked up the pamphlet again. "I found this in the manse when we requisitioned it from its previous owner. I still can't figure out quite why this would be issued."

"It's actually quite obvious, Colonel," Sierck said as he finished up and started to move the unconscious body of Iosiph to the chair he had sat in. "If the Imperium wants people to come live on Armageddon, then that must mean Armageddon hasn't got that many people on it any more."

The Colonel put down the pamphlet. "I can think of a reason for that to happen," he said slowly. He started tapping his rhythm, the drums' rhythm, into his desk. "But I don't want to think it is true," he said at length, ceasing with his tapping. "In the same way I highly doubt you to be a traitor, Magos."

"You say that," Sierck said as he propped Iosiph up, "just after I knocked a priest of the Church Militant out with a few simple nerve pinches?" He sounded highly amused. "It's a severe offence to do harm upon the clerics of the Ecclesiarchy. A capital offence, actually. I am amazed you haven't done something about this yet, Colonel."

"I don't give two shits about the Emperor-botherers, Sierck," the Colonel said, almost spitting out the final words. "They get in my way with their ideas of purity, honour and zeal. Neither is any replacement for good strategy. Anyone with half a brain knows that... except for the Emperor-botherers." He went back to studying the pamphlet, opening it, trying to find a clue as to what, exactly, it meant. He wanted his suspicions to be dead wrong.

"So," Sierck mused as he changed the setting on his omni-tool, "you wouldn't mind if I cooked his brain inside his head, then?"

"Actually, I would," the Colonel replied. "The drums say we will need him."

"The drums?"

"Yes."

"What do the drums say about me then, if anything?" Sierck asked after a moment's silence, though he sounded sceptical.

"To keep you alive, and to trust you." The Colonel didn't even take his eyes of the pamphlet.

"Why do you listen to them? The drums, I mean." Sierck said after another pause.

"Because if I don't, people will die. Well, the wrong people. My people."

"And your wearing of that mask?"

"Has nothing to do with the drums. That is my own choice."

Sierck pursed his lips as he mulled the answers he had got. "And people call me insane," he said eventually. The Colonel decided to ignore the Magos' remark just this once. He would learn proper discipline in time.

"So," Sierck said, looking to the door of the office, "how do we explain this little situation to the Lieutenant? He's very efficient, and clever, that man."

"Iosiph has had a heart-attack. You can make it look like that, can't you?"

"'Make it look like'? Colonel, I can do more than that!" Sierck changed the setting on his omni-tool again and jabbed it into Iosiph's chest. The air was filled with a high-pitched whine for a split second. "There! Instant heart-attack. Though, I suggest you call for a medic. That is, if you want him to live past the next hour."

The Colonel gave Sierck a blank stare, then put down the pamphlet and made to activate his vox-link.

"Get your shackles back on, Magos," he said as his finger hovered over the activation rune. "As you said, Hoss is a clever man." As Sierck scrambled to get the shackles back on, the Colonel ordered for a medic on the general channel.

* * *

><p>"Ouch! Be careful, Magos."<p>

"I am careful, colonel," Sierck replied. "It's you who are being a big baby about this."

It was a week after Father Iosiph's rather unlucky heart attack. The 88th's mission on Sycorax was nearing completion and the Colonel had requested new orders from Sector High Command via astropathic link. He had also requested an explanation for the pamphlet about colonising Armageddon, a decision reached after long deliberation. He had yet to break the news to the regiment at large, and he had ordered his officers to try to stem any rumours as soon as they sprang up. It had turned out slightly more difficult than anticipated. The 88th hadn't been issued with any regimental commissars for the Sycoraxian mission and in his own way, the Colonel was silently grateful for it, but at the same time the lack of dedicated political officers was making itself known across the regiment, as there was less and less for the troops to do and unrest and rumours were starting to pop up as mushrooms in the sumps of a hive city.

Yet for the time being, the Colonel had a much more pressing concern, which Sierck was busy trying to sort out for him. The Colonel had had to pull considerable weight over his officers, and in particular his Enginseers, to get Sierck freed from his imprisonment. Hoss and Enginseers Shaern, Sakkle and Sauer had all opposed his decision on the basis of Sierck being a wanted tech heretic, by order of the Adeptus Mechanicus. The Colonel had simply replied that he wanted to hear specific charges in that case, to which he got no reply. He had then offered the enginseers to screen Sierck personally for perceived tech heresy - a test Sierck had passed with flying colours, much to the Colonel's relief.

However, that was not what was bothering the Colonel either. He winced as Sierck struck another nerve with a plier.

"Keep still!" Sierck scolded, obviously engrossed in whatever it was he was seeing in the hole in the Colonel's cheek.

"I swear, it's gotten larger," the Colonel muttered. He tried not to move his jaw when speaking, making his words come out rather mashed.

"If Chief Medic Major Brant had kept picts of the wound from when you got it, it would have helped greatly." Sierck sat up straight and reached for a bottle of antiseptic gel. "As it is, we'll just have to wait and see. That can be interesting too!"

The Colonel gave Sierck a sharp look. "What if it eats up my entire face?" he growled.

"Then we'd know for certain that it was indeed getting bigger. Now, please sit still while I apply this. Then you can put your mask back on."

The Colonel actually managed to sit still as the cold antisept was applied. It stung but somehow, it felt nice too. It did bother him that Sierck had not been able to quiet his fears about the wound in his cheek. He hadn't been able to sew it shut either.

"It's not infected _per se_," Sierck said as he finished and indicated to the Colonel to put his gasmask back on. "It is after all a las wound... But it never hurts to be careful. Do try to air the wound daily and reapply antisept every evening."

"As I've been doing so far?" the Colonel asked with a wry smile as he put his mask on. It was a vanity, he knew, but going around with a hole in his cheek was not very heroic either.

Sierck looked a bit annoyed at being predicted. "Yes," he said after a brief moment, "as Doctor Brant no doubt ordered you."

The Colonel smiled behind his mask. He motioned for Sierck to pack up his things and leave the office, wanting to be alone for some time. As Sierck went up to the door, it opened and the Magos nearly stumbled into Hoss. Hoss shot Sierck a murderous look, which was returned by an apologetic smile as Sierck slunk past Hoss and into the corridor outside.

"You still don't trust him," the Colonel said. It was not a question.

"No, sir," Hoss replied. He showed a dataslate to his commander. "Nevermind that though, sir. Corporal Ipswitz intercepted this this morning. She just finished decrypting it." Hoss handed the dataslate over to the Colonel, who had come round his desk to stand next to his aide.

"What is it?" he asked, intrigued. He took the slate and pressed the large glowing play-rune on it, the indicator of a file containing vox-only glowing in a corner. It started playing before Hoss could reply.

"To Commander Brautisch of the Destroyer _Berus_," a small tinny voice announced from the speaker built into the dataslate. "In response to your request: You are to hold the Armageddon 88th Steel Legion at their current location. Stop. Await support. Stop. Estimated time of arrival: Two weeks."

Then the vox recording stopped and rewound itself to start again. The Colonel stopped it.

"This was encrypted, you say?" the Colonel asked.

"Yes, but Corporal Ipswitz managed to decrypt it. A feat, considering the encryption level was magenta." Hoss sounded proud of the achievement of his vox-officer.

"Inform the corporal that her work for today is not quite over," the Colonel said slowly, a frown of annoyance working its way over his features. "I want a direct link with Commander Brautisch. I have some questions that need answering, and I think he owes me an explanation or two."

* * *

><p>"If I have done what, Colonel?" Commander Brautisch asked, a look of exasperation and confusion on his face. His image twitched and realigned but the Colonel was certain that his vox-officer, with a little help from Enginseer Sakkle, would not let it break until he was done.<p>

"Have you been in contact with Sector High Command, Commander?" the Colonel asked, repeating his question. Needlessly in his opinion. "It's a simple question, yes or no?"

Brautisch looked flustered over being so curtly addressed. "Yes, and I received reply this morning. I was to relay the content to you later today, as it concerns the 88th Steel Legion."

"I see," the Colonel said. "The reason I'm asking, Commander, is because I have been trying to make contact with High Command for quite some days now - your dear Astropath can no doubt inform you of that - but I have still to receive a reply to my request from them."

"I cannot fathom why that would be so, Colonel," Brautisch replied with a shrug, a move that strangely enough caused the pict to jitter. "All I know is that you have orders to remain on Sycorax until further notice. I cannot take measures to have you brought on board the transports. Not yet, anyway."

"Not two weeks ago we were ordered to rest and regroup for off-world transportation, after being tasked to strike down this uprising with the utmost force," the Colonel said with a dark note to his voice. "It feels highly... irregular to receive a change of orders in this manner."

"As I said," Brautisch said with another shrug, "I can only relay the orders as I got them. I'm sorry, Colonel."

"Is that really all orders you received, Commander?"

"If I received any other orders, pertaining to me or my vessel the _Berus_, Colonel, then it is hardly your place to know," Brautisch snapped, suddenly defensive.

"Very well then," the Colonel said softly and broke the link. A brusque move, but he had had his suspicions confirmed and a ruffled ego belonging to a Commander of the Imperial Navy was his least concern.

He started to tap out the staccato rhythm of the drums against the table upon which the vox-pict-unit stood. So, what remained was the pamphlets and how to deal with their content.

"Sir?"

The voice of Lieutenant Hoss broke him from his reverie.

"What do we do now, sir?" The young man looked genuinely concerned. Hoss was intelligent. He was completely aware of the virtual slap in the face the Colonel just had delivered to the Navy Commander.

The Colonel made his decision.

"Lieutenant, what is the largest place of gathering in Sycorax City?"

Hoss didn't even bother to check on his ubiquitous dataslate. He knew what was coming. "It's the Sycorax Stadium," he said. A look of embarrassment crept across his face. "It's a scrumball pitch-"

"Can it house the 30 000 men and women of the 88th?" the Colonel asked, glad for the mask that hid his smile.

"Easily, sir, though large portions of the regiment are stationed across the globe on clean-up actions. They would have to be ordered back."

"Then, Hoss, inform the company commanders that they have three days to get back to Sycorax City. Arrange for the air-lifting of the companies furthest away from here via Valkyrie if they can't make it in time."

"Acknowledged sir, however..."

"What?"

"What about those companies' Chimera APCs? They can't be air-lifted with Valkyries."

The Colonel patted Hoss on his arm, trying to act avuncular. "My dear Dietric Hoss; it's not as if there is anybody around on this planet that would steal them, is there?"

Hoss nodded and got going. As the Colonel watched him go, he felt the drums fall silent for a brief moment.

* * *

><p>Captain Grigory Anielewitz of the 1st company <em>Stosstruppen<em> was an impressive sight in his black carapace armour, dark grey battle tunic, with his beetle black helmet with bonewhite skull mask under his left arm. He was a proud man, a man to whom duty was everything. That didn't stop the slight feeling of unease from crawling into his stomach as he received his orders from the Colonel.

The entirety of the Armageddon 88th Steel Legion was gathering in the Sycorax Stadium, except for the captain and a handful of his men; his most trusted men.

"Are your orders clear to you, captain?" the Colonel asked.

"Yes, sir!" Anielewitz replied. The Colonel saw the man's unease, though.

"Something on your mind, Grigory?"

"Permission to speak freely, sir?" came the reply, the captain's voice wavering slightly.

The Colonel nodded. "Permission granted."

"With all due respect, sir, what we are about to do is... it's treason, sir!"

The Colonel closed his eyes and slowly exhaled. He had feared this. He had hoped Anielewitz, of all people, would just do as he was ordered, without question. That was why he had decided to leave him out of the gathering at the Stadium.

"This is no more treasonous than what has already been done to the populace of Armageddon, Grigory. Trust me."

"Sir," Anielewitz licked his lips, "we can't know that to be true." The Colonel had briefed the company commanders on his plans for the Stadium, he owed them that much, but some of them had seemed unable to accept the truth. None had stepped out of line, but there had been a lot of grumbling. The Colonel had dearly hoped that Anielewitz were to be spared of those doubts.

"Grigory," the Colonel said slowly, considering every word he was to say next. "Is it not enough proof that Sector High Command refuses to speak with me? They don't trust me, nor the 88th Steel Legion either, and they are going to deal with us the same way they dealt with our families, families we have not heard one word from in the last months. Now go! All shall be made clear soon enough. Lock and load, fire and forget!"

Anielewitz nodded curtly, put on his helmet and mask and readied his hellgun for the grisly work ahead: the liquidation of the Steel Legion's preachers.

* * *

><p>Dusk was settling over Sycorax City, stars starting to wink to life across the dark blue sky, a ruddy hint in the west of the setting sun. One couldn't see the sunset due to the walls of the Stadium, but it mattered little to the Colonel. He glanced up towards the heavens, able to make out the <em>Berus<em> just about. It was the brightest "star" on the firmament, winking slowly but clearly in its geo-stationary orbit.

The drums had told him to keep an eye on the star-ship and the heaven's tonight. He had an idea why and hoped he would be able to time his speech to what was going to take place.

His speech... The Colonel looked down and out across the entirety of his regiment crowded into the Stadium. It was a choked, grey mass of men and women, eager to hear what it was he was going to say. He had opted to have the company commanders up on the hastily built stage with him. The same went for the Enginseers and the Magos. He couldn't see them now, but he knew that they were all just as eager to hear what he had to say, sitting behind him. He could almost feel their eyes boring into the back of his bare head.

The drums were ominously silent now, a fact that made his gut churn at what he was about to do. Yet, what choice did he, or his regiment have? His hand had been forced.

_Now or never,_ he thought.

"Men and women of the Armageddon 88th Steel Legion," he began, his voice carrying clearly thanks for Shaern's and Ipswitz' workings with the stadium vox-system. "I have called you here today to make you aware of something most grave and heinous. Something grave and heinous done towards you, towards us. Towards our families and friends back home on Armageddon."

A general murmur was creeping through the massive crowd, but the Colonel silenced it with a simple raising of his right hand.

"You are no doubt aware of the pamphlets that have been found all across Sycorax, telling people to come to Armageddon, as colonists to some fringe world! To Armageddon! A hive world with a population of up-toward a 100 billion? I ask, is it necessary to have colonists on such a world?

"No, it's not," the Colonel answered his own question, cutting off another angry murmur. "It is not! Unless something terrible has happened. I asked myself this, just as you no doubt have asked yourselves the exact same question, and tried to get in contact with Sector High Command, requesting an explanation for this.

"I worried! You worry! What has happened to our families? To our friends? We are not fools! We are aware of the warp storms that have raged of late. We are just concerned for those we hold dear. Our loved ones!

"Sector High Command responded to my plea with silence."

A hushed expectation had settled over the Stadium by now. Dusk was being replaced by night and the stars shone brighter, with the winking light of the _Berus_ brightest of all.

"The _Berus_," the Colonel said and pointed at the bright light in the heavens, causing every head in the crowd to turn towards it, "and it's commander, has refused to speak to me for three days now. Our job here is done, so why don't they take us on board the transports? What are they hiding?

"I'll tell you what! They are trying to cover up that they have had our families murdered!" A gasp went through the crowd, a shrill cry of despair heard here and there as the news settled in. The drums had started to beat ever so slowly again, and the Colonel knew he didn't have much time now. "They are trying to cover up the tracks of their heinous crime against us, by coming here, and having us killed! Even now, the commander of the _Berus_ is plotting against the 88th Steel Legion, preparing to have us murdered. They are claiming to do the God-Emperor's will! But divine right is on our side, whatever the servants of the Throne think! We have friends in high places too!

"Just look!" The Colonel pointed to the sky again, and just as last time, every head turned to look at the brightly shining star that was the _Berus_.

Night turned to day as the star that was the _Berus_ flashed impossibly bright for a few seconds and a gasp of awe rustled through the gathered 88th Steel Legion.

The Colonel smiled behind his mask. "Divine retribution."

The drums started their staccato rhythm in his mind again, but they seemed content now, almost pleased.

And in the sky, another bright star started to move towards where the _Berus_ had held geo-stationary orbit.

* * *

><p>Following his speech, the Colonel had ordered his company commanders to join their troops and help them to their billeting in an orderly fashion. The stadium had been emptied slowly, but surely, and the Colonel knew why: the Steel Legions, famed for their battle-field brutality, were also tightly disciplined and would fall back on that in times of distress, and seeing the destroyer that had escorted them here go up in a blaze, after he had dropped that bomb-shell on them, was most distressing. Yet it had had to be done, all of it. He would not keep his soldiers in the dark any longer, they had to know the treachery that had been committed against them.<p>

He was sitting in a chair in the communications centre of his head quarters. Hoss was there with him, as was Corporal Ipswitz, Magos Sierck, the chief medic Major Brant and also the returned Anielewitz. The latter had reported in with a simple "It is done", and nothing else.

They all looked nervous, even Sierck. Ipswitz, true to her form, had put up her vox set and activated it, fiddling with the dials, scanning the frequencies in a vain attempt to occupy her mind with something menial. The others tried to occupy their minds too, as well they could.

"It can't be true," Hoss muttered after a long silence.

"What part of it?" Sierck asked, he too seemingly very disturbed, or was he frightened?

"Our home," Hoss said, his voice barely a whisper. All antipathy towards Sierck was forgotten.

"It would explain the lack of astrograms," Brant said. He was a tall, lean man with blond hair. He looked far too young to be a major.

"It could be the warp storms-" Hoss tried, but was cut off by Brant.

"They ceased many weeks ago. And Armageddon is not that far away from Sycorax: a mere 50 light years. We should receive astrograms within the week from Armageddon."

"Brant's right," Sierck said. "An astrogram travels faster than a star-ship."

Hoss was silent for a while. "Where are the priests? Shouldn't they help us, at a time like this? Isn't that their duty?" Anielewitz shifted uncomfortably, but the Colonel answered for him.

"Father Iosiph is still in a coma from his massive heart-attack, Hoss."

"But we've others!"

"They're," the Colonel began, glancing quickly at Anielewitz, "shall we say? Inconvenienced."

Before Hoss could reply, Ipswitz broke in:

"Sir! I've got something!"

The Colonel gave her a slow look. "It's chatter between the transports, no doubt." He still couldn't quite understand why the drums had wanted the regiment to see the demise of the _Berus_, if the transports would remain, but he was not one to question their motives.

"No," Ipswitz said, sounding guilty. "It's not on the Imperial channels. Not any standard Navy channels at least. But it is transmitting a call signal that's of Imperial origin. At least from what I can see."

"What?" The Colonel got up out of his chair and got over to Ipswitz. He was joined by the others as they crowded around the vox set.

"It's a weird signal-type, and it carries only traces of Imperial protocol..." Ipswitz said slowly. "I say traces, as it seems to be really strange, sir. It only vaguely resembles the protocols I've been taught to keep an ear out for. It's just... the channel is completely non-standard!"

The drums crescendoed and fell silent in the Colonel's mind. It was all so obvious now!

"Hail them!" he said. "Use the 88th's regimental insignia as ident code."

Ipswitz did as she was told, introducing herself as the link was established. She frowned as she received her reply and looked up at the Colonel.

"It's in Low Gothic, but strangely accented, sir. Sort of like Tempestorian, but worse. It... He," she corrected herself, "introduces himself as Warsmith Todt and he wishes to speak to you." She pulled off the headset and handed it to the Colonel. "In private."

* * *

><p>The giant stature of the God-Emperor of Mankind, a small marvel in pale, green-threaded marble, had been defiled in the most ingenious of ways. The Colonel hadn't had to order his men to do anything after they had entered the Sycorax Cathedral of His Divine Light. The original population had done the job for them. It was the main reason the cathedral had been shut and sealed upon arrival. The feet of the statue had been covered in now dried-up human excrement and blood, and someone, the Colonel knew not and cared not who, had decided to fire a bolt pistol at the Emperor's face. Half the head was missing and the rest of his armoured body was covered in the pockmarks of small-arms fire. Just seeing it made the drums beat slightly faster. They were excited.<p>

And every single aquila in the cathedral, every single one, had been filed flat or otherwise scrubbed out. It was quite remarkable the amount of labour that had gone into the desecration. It spoke of an obsessiveness amongst the former populace and of how deep the taint had run.

As things were now, it just meant that the Sycoraxians had done the lion's share of the work the Colonel had been ordered to perform.

Hoss moved up next to him where he stood, looking at the over-sized statue. The change that had come over the man in the last day was astounding. His aide hawked and spat at the statue.

"To think we followed that shit. And now, he abandons us," Hoss muttered.

"_He_," the Colonel said, "never cared. And that is the sad fact of the matter, Hoss. We were duped, as all Imperial citizens are. However, consider our luck."

The Lieutenant gave a grim smile. "Yes, somebody must be smiling upon us, sir."

"Indeed they are, but to get a little, one must give a little. Today, we will give a little. And Father Iosiph will help us greatly." The Colonel turned around to look at Magos Sierck, who was cradling the comatose body of the preacher in his arms. The Magos looked very uncomfortable and the Colonel knew why.

The task they had to do was one that only Sierck had any knowledge of, or at least any prior knowledge.

Sierck noticed the Colonel's look and said, "Do I have to do this?"

"Yes, you do, my dear Magos," the Colonel replied, putting pointed emphasis on the rank as a reminder to Sierck himself. "Our new-found allies do not require much from us to come to our aid. Iosiph will do nicely. And from what we learned yesterday, you seem to know how to do it."

"Only in theory," Sierck muttered. "It is beyond my area of expertise and frankly, it makes me uneasy." He shifted Iosiph's comatose bulk around in his arms. The small man wasn't heavy, but a bit unwieldy to carry.

The Colonel replied with raising an eyebrow, and then looked over to Hoss, who was smirking in an unpleasant way. He knew, it would seem.

"Funny," the Colonel said and turned back to look at Sierck. "You seemed eager to rid yourself of Father Iosiph not two weeks ago."

Sierck made a face, deflated slightly, and then walked up in front of the desecrated altar of the God-Emperor of Mankind and knelt down.

"You might want to stand back, Colonel, Lieutenant," he said and the Colonel smiled to himself at the finality in Sierck's admittance of his military rank. A small but important victory. Sierck lowered Iosiph's body down to the ground, his lower mechadendrites uncoiling themselves and snaking around his body, one reaching into Sierck's utility bag that hung from a strap over his shoulder and plucking out a large, broad-bladed combat knife. "This will get messy, by its very nature," Sierck added and shooed the Colonel back further with one of his hands.

The Colonel backed off, despite the fact that the drums were going wild in his head, the drumming so hard it physically hurt now. As he backed up, he drew level with Chief Medic Brant, who was present together with the rest of the officer cadre of the 88th Steel Legion. Brant looked concerned, but still seemed collected.

"I hope you have no objections about this, doctor?" the Colonel asked quietly.

Brant looked at him and shook his head slightly. "No, not as such. Iosiph would not have lasted long any way, from what I could judge. I'm just curious to what you meant with that comment to the Magos? Was he the reason Iosiph was in this condition?"

The Colonel cursed inwardly.

"Iosiph's condition was an accident, doctor, nothing else," he said. "Sierck was present when it happened, yes, but you know how cogboys can be about energy-efficiency at times?"

"Yes, yes I can," Brant replied, but he did not sound too convinced. The Colonel made a mental note to keep an eye on Brant for the time being.

"At least now it serves a purpose, I guess," Brant said quietly, as if almost to himself. The Colonel was not paying attention to him anymore, however. His entire attention was focused on Sierck's doings.

The drums had fallen silent in anticipation again.

* * *

><p>Sierck knew the action was nothing but baseless theatrics. He would be soaking in viscera and blood before this was over, but still he rolled the sleeves of his robe up. He turned his olfactory functions off with a mind-click; he couldn't stand the smells of humans at the best of times, and they smelled even worse on the inside.<p>

He started to arrange the arms and legs of Iosiph into a vague star pattern, getting four points, five with the head. Before this was over, he'd have all eight and the focus would be complete.

He took the knife out of the mechadendrite's grip, preferring to use his original two hands, even if there was precious little original about them beyond the neural system. A small but deep cut just below Iosiph's jawline was the first one made. Blood welled out in a steady flow, dark from carbondioxide saturation. Sierck put his empty left hand under Iosiph's chin, collected some blood in it and started to smear a circle around the body. He then smeared a star point on Iosiph's face, hands and bare feet. That was five. Three to go.

Sierck grabbed the knife two-handed, wrapping one hand above the other on the hilt, knife-blade down and raised it above his head. This part was the hardest. With a short, low grunt he rammed it through the tough sternum of the little preacher. As soon as the knife broke through, Sierck pulled it towards himself, breaking through bone through sheer force. It was hard going but he made it. He pulled the knife to his right, knowingly cutting open the diaphragm. He made a similar cut to the left side of the chest as well.

The Magos felt Iosiph's body, which hadn't been that responsive to begin with in its comatose state, relax in that final way only a corpse could as life left the little man. Soon the body would void what little waste there was in it and that was the worst part in Sierck's opinion. That needed to be made into a star point as well, and if there wasn't any waste he could always-

"But first!" he said quietly as a personal reminder.

Sierck placed the knife next to himself, the blade stained deep red, and grabbed a reverse hold on the two flaps that he had created in the chest. Even for someone as cyber-enhanced as he, it was hard to pry open a human ribcage. Sierck managed though, with a grunt of effort. The ribcage opened up with a crunching, squelching noise, as bone and viscera loosened from their internal bonds.

Sierck picked up the knife again and started to carefully cut the lungs loose, leaving the trachea intact. When that was done, he lifted the lungs out and over the shoulders of the body, plopping them down on the ground next to the head and using the knife to carve a star point each into the lungs, forming two more.

Sierck got up and removed the thin surgical gown that covered the body to make the final star point.

As he found himself staring at the relatively dry floor between the body's legs, Sierck felt a tad disappointed. Obviously the gods felt he was not to get off that easily today.

He knelt down again and carefully cut a star point along the erect haft of the penis of the corpse.

With that done, Sierck straightened up and walked right over to the Colonel.

"Now what, Magos?" the Colonel asked. He looked strangely unmoved by what Sierck had just done; even Brant that stood next to the Colonel looked a little green around the gills.

Sierck licked his lips and held up his bloodied hands. "I need to wash, Colonel," he said.

"I understand that. What about-"

"You just wait, but don't get any closer to the... the focus, let's just call it that for now. Just wait, Colonel," Sierck said and hurried off, eager to get the blood off himself.

The Colonel watched Sierck's back as the Magos left, muttering under his breath. It was annoying when the Magos only spoke half of his actual thoughts on something, but this was vague even for Sierck. He turned his attention to Enginseer Shaern, who was sitting on a pew not far from him.

"What do you think he meant, Magda?"

The Lady Enginseer shrugged, a curious gesture for someone with a mechanical torso. "With him? Who knows? But I'd suggest that we do as he said, Colonel."

"You trust him?"

"I trust his words," Shaern replied diplomatically.

"Can you smell that?"

It was another one of the Enginseers, Sakkle, that had spoken. He smacked his tongue in displeasure at the smell.

"I can," Brant said, wrinkling his nose.

The Colonel, reflecting briefly over the fact that people took it as a matter of fact that he wore his respirator mask at all times nowadays, reached up and removed it to get a chance to smell what the others were sensing. He ignored the stunned gasp from Hoss as the hole in his cheek was revealed, with its eight tiny red tendrils snaking out from its edges. He sniffed the air.

"How-" Hoss started asking, but the Colonel cut him off.

"That's ozone," he said. "But there are no refractor-"

A mighty thunderclap of sound cut him off, the force of the pressurised air throwing him against the backrest of the pew at which he was standing. He was rendered temporarily blind, his bionic eyes fighting frantically to re-establish proper white balance, as a flash filled the room at about the same time as the thunderclap. Later, the Colonel would swear on his life that the thunderclap had come before the flash of light.

The Colonel regained his sight and got up, seeing that his officers had all been bowled over as well. The drums had fallen completely silent again. He tapped Brant on the shoulder to get his attention.

"See to them as soon as you can see properly again," he said and then turned his attention to the altar.

The statue of the Emperor of Mankind lay as rubble over the altar, the corpse that used to be Father Iosiph vaporised in the sudden flash of energy, a sticky gruel on the floor the only hint to it having existed at all.

Before the altar stood three impossibly large armoured figures. Their armour was vast and bulky, the heat from their internal fusion reactors starting to fill the spacious cathedral already. Their armour was coloured a dark silver, the trims and exo-skeleton reinforcements worked in gold, with the odd plate painted with black and yellow hazard stripes. The two men, for the Colonel assumed them to be men despite their size, standing to the sides wore helmets sprouting gilt tusks akin to a wild boar's, the lenses of their helmets gleaming blue. They carried double-barrelled bolters in their right hands and large power mauls with heads shaped like cogwheels in their left. The cogwheel pattern was something that was repeated on the trims of their armour.

What really drew the Colonel's attention though was the man, or was it really a man, standing in the centre and clearly the leader of the small group of warriors, his long cloak of faded purple making him stand apart, as did his equipment.

His armour was similar to his companions, but his gun was mounted directly to his right forearm's armour and was clearly a combi-melta of some design. In his left hand he held a staff. The staff was as tall as the centre warrior himself, worked entirely in steel and tipped with a cogwheel encircling an eight-pointed star. In the centre of the star there was a blue, glowing gemstone.

The man's head was bare, save for the rebreather-unit he wore over the lower half of his face. His eyes were black, he lacked eyebrows and tiny wisps of grey hair still clung to his heavily augmented scalp.

All of them carried the heraldry of a silver skull on their right shoulder pads.

The centre warrior, the leader, fixed the Colonel with a hard stare.

"You are the Colonel and commanding officer of this outfit."

It was not a question.

"Yes, I am the commanding officer of the Armageddon 88th Steel Legion," the Colonel confirmed, correcting the gigantic warrior-leader with the regimental name.

One of the warriors to the side of the leader took one thudding step forward, making the floor shake.

"You will address him as 'my lord', mortal!" he growled.

The leader put out his staff in front of his enraged companion to stall any further violence.

"It is quite fine for now, Brother Aiyaz. They are not familiar with our practices. Yet. In time, you may chastise such infringements."

The one identified as Aiyaz stepped back and fell silent. The leader focused on the Colonel again.

"I am Technomancer Xavier of the 14th Grand Company of the Iron Warriors Legion. I am the personal advisor and warp-counsel of the Lord Warsmith Todt, who you are no doubt familiar with."

"And the Warsmith was too busy to come himself," the Colonel said, paused and added, "my lord?"

"Watch your tongue, mortal," Aiyaz muttered. "The Lord Technomancer could snap you like a twig. All of you!"

"That's enough, Aiyaz!" Xavier barked. The threat of violence hung in the air, and the Colonel could feel the drums starting up, only to feel them silenced as Xavier collected himself.

"The Lord Warsmith has more pressing business right now. I am acting in his stead. You were offering your services as warriors to us, were you not, Colonel?"

By now, Sierck had cleaned himself up, made his way back into the cathedral nave and walked up to the Colonel, ignoring his colleagues and Brant, who were busy helping the still dazed officers of the 88th.

Xavier nodded curtly to Sierck, recognising him with a simple, "Magos."

"Lord Technomancer," Sierck replied, but did not make any sign of respect other than that simple phrase.

"So, Colonel?" Xavier asked, returning his gaze to the Colonel. "You already carry the mark, and in many ways, we have awaited you and your soldiers arrival."

The Colonel, ignoring that Sierck seemed to know this Xavier since before, removed the gauntlet from his right hand, leaving it bare and extended it to Xavier. It took the Technomancer a few seconds to recognise the ancient Terran practice of handshaking.

Xavier extended his own right hand, carefully closing it around the Colonel's so as not to crush it accidentally.

"You have the men and women, the guns and tanks of the 88th Steel Legion, my lord," the Colonel said as they shook hands, very carefully.

"And the 14th Grand Company welcomes you aboard the _Chronos_, Colonel," Xavier replied. He broke the handshake and looked out at the people in the cathedral, all looking at him in rapt attention.

"Together we will take the sound of the drums of war to our enemies."

At those words, the drums returned, but now the Colonel was certain they weren't just in his head.

They were all around them.


	2. The Warsmith and the Colonel

Two giants in burnished steel-coloured power armour led them down the corridor. The giants were men. One could be forgiven for mistaking them for demi-gods, but they were men.

The colonel knew they were men because of their faces.

The entire officer cadre of the 88th Armageddon Steel Legion was being led down the corridor: 36 men and women, as the enginseers and Sierck had joined them. Yet, even if they wanted to, the colonel was certain that his officers could not over-power and kill the two Astartes.

The one that lead them was a leonine red-head, his features regal. Yet for all that, he had freckles. Freckles! He had introduced himself as Chosen Gistavus and bluntly told them that they were to follow him and his battle-brother, Chosen Reinhard.

Chosen Reinhard brought up the rear; no doubt making certain none of them strayed off the set path to go spelunking in the deeper depths of the _Chronos_. Reinhard was hard-faced and blond-haired, his face akin to the blade he carried at his waist. His face was crossed by a fair few number of scars.

The corridors they were being led through were remarkably bare. In some part of his mind, the colonel had thought the grand cruiser to be more decorated. Yet one glance at the armour plates of the Astartes watching them as they walked down the corridor was enough of an answer. These Iron Warriors did not care much for decoration.

The corridors were a reassurance. You could see the ceiling. Born of the Hive world Armageddon, none of them had probably even seen the sky prior to enlisting in the Imperial Guard. The colonel himself had been well into his 30s before he saw the vast, sickly yellow openness that was the sky of Armageddon.

The entire officer cadre had been ordered to meet with the lord warsmith of the 14th Grand Company, to be briefed on regulations on board and what was expected of them. Being relaxed when meeting the supreme commander of these post-humans was essential in the colonel's mind.

Gistavus stopped by a portal-door with the grinning iron skull of the Iron Warriors set on a golden 14-spoked cogwheel on its surface. He tapped a sequence into the data-pad by the door's side and it slid open without as much as a creak.

The officers of the Steel Legion followed the red-headed Astartes inside. The colonel was not surprised it was the observatorium of the ship, the blue-green ball of Sycorax visible through a vast dome in front of them, the planet framed by the twinkling of stars and the glittering debris of the _Berus_.

There was a lone, fully armoured Astartes in the chamber, his back turned towards them.

'As ordered, my Lord Warsmith,' Gistavus said, bowing slightly, 'I have brought the mortal commanders.'

'Good, though I believe I ordered you and Reinhard both to bring them here?' The warsmith's voice was low, almost impossibly low, and strangely muffled. He had not turned to acknowledge them.

'I am here, lord,' Reinhard said, stepping forward.

'Excellent.' There was a hint of a smile in that voice. 'I don't want a repeat of last time, Reinhard.' It was no request.

The colonel dared a glance at Reinhard, only to catch a glimpse of a sour expression, before the Astartes had collected himself again.

'You're dismissed,' the warsmith said, meaning his two brethren.

The two Astartes bowed and then left, closing the observatorium door behind them. Once they had left, the lord warsmith finally turned around. The colonel noted that the large, lumpy shade over the man's right shoulder was a servo-arm, a larger and bulkier cousin to Sierck's ditto. What caught the colonel's attention the most was the yellow eyes, which almost seemed to glow in the dimmed lighting.

'Lights to 60 %,' the lord warsmith commanded. 'Glare shield to 80 %.'

The internal lighting of the observatorium increased and the bluegreen ball of Sycorax behind him faded away until it was barely discernible. The glow of the warsmith's eyes seemed to dim too. The reason of his muffled voice was revealed: he was wearing a heavy rebreather unit over his face. The colonel couldn't help but wonder if the warsmith was also covering up an injury, like himself.

The lord warsmith looked over the gathered mortals, his gaze lingering on each one of them for a fraction of a second. The colonel realised what he was doing: memorising faces to go with names. He had little doubt that the lord warsmith already knew them all by name, but he found it remarkable that this being even bothered with it. He'd met generals in his time that cared less about what the men they sent to death were actually named.

'I am Lord Warsmith Ludwig Todt,' the Astartes suddenly announced. 'You will address me as Lord Warsmith, my Lord, Warsmith Todt or sire, and never any other way. The same applies to my subordinates, who you will address with proper rank and respect.'

'We are all career soldiers, Lord Warsmith,' the colonel said, trying to contain a sudden flare of anger against this arrogance. 'We are well-aware of the decorum and method of address within a military hierarchy, sire. With all due respect, I doubt that the 14th Grand Company is that much different from the Imperial Guard as far as these things are concerned... sire.'

Todt gave the colonel a long, calculating look.

'Then I assume you know what is expected of you on board this vessel? That you are to keep to your assigned quarters and never stray from them? Should you wish to visit any other part of the _Chronos_, you require the permission from an Iron Warrior battle-brother?'

'Aye, my Lord,' the colonel replied. 'To be perfectly frank, your… technomancer and warp-counsel informed us of this when we boarded, sire.'

Todt raised two fuzzy eyebrows at that, clearly surprised.

With that, the matter seemed concluded to the Warsmith, who directed his attention to the enginseers instead. The colonel knew a disciplinary slight when he saw it.

The colonel couldn't hear anything, but he saw in the corner of his eyes the stunned reaction of Shaern, Sakkle and Sauer. Sierck seemed less moved. Obviously, the warsmith had sent something that only they could hear. Sierck's lack of reaction to this didn't pass the warsmith by.

'I am glad to see you back on board, Magos Sierck,' Todt said, trying to sound amicable. It failed. Sierck managed to somehow pale at the direct address. It spoke of the complexity of his augments.

'Believe me, lord, the pleasure is all mine,' Sierck replied stiffly. 'I hope that the optic implants are to your satisfaction?'

Todt nodded. 'Quite. I have optical capacity I could hardly dream of before. You kept true to you promise.'

Sierck couldn't stop the self-satisfied smirk that crept over his face.

'That'd be because I built them, Lord,' he said. It seemed like a cue to the colonel.

'As the genius you are,' Todt replied, obviously picking up on the cue too. That bit of ego-stroking seemed to calm Sierck down, but the stiffness of the magos' stance remained.

'Now,' Todt said, addressing all the officers again, 'seeing as the good technomancer decided to inform you of our practices ahead of me, continuing to waste time here is pointless. You are dismissed, to rejoin with your companies and make certain they arrive at their billeting on board in an orderly fashion. Your adjutants will, by now, have been informed of where this is going to be by my chosen. Failure to comply with your orders will be met with death.'

They all started to move out of the observatorium, when Todt raised his voice again.

'The colonel will stay.'

_Now, what's this?_ he thought.

The colonel complied, watching the backs of his officers as they left the observatorium, immediately directed the correct way by the waiting Chosen Gistavus on the outside. Of Reinhard there was no trace.

The door closed after the last of his officers and the colonel turned back to look at the lord warsmith.

'I hope you understand you are in a position of debt, colonel,' Todt said without preamble.

The colonel nodded and added, for good measure, 'Sire.'

'Good, because what I tell you next is not a request. I hope you understand as much?'

The colonel curdled his rising anger at the post-human's arrogance and simply nodded his confirmation again. Something about the warsmith was deeply off-setting and only got worse the closer the Astartes came to him. Todt had walked up to him during their conversation, trying to seem familiar. It failed utterly as far as the colonel was concerned. The lord warsmith was an Astartes, so far removed from human as it was possible to be without being xenos. Yet there was something more, an... air? Something about him that set the colonel's teeth on edge.

'What is your will, lord?' the colonel asked.

'You're getting the gist quick. I like that.' There was the hint of a smile behind that mask again. 'For all the things my warp-counsel has told you, he did not inform you about the fact that something is chasing us. Or rather, it is coming to Sycorax. What for, I do not know.'

The colonel had a hunch he knew what it was.

'I have an idea what it might be,' the colonel muttered. The comment seemed to pass the warsmith by.

'What is chasing us was enough to _unnerve_ my warp-counsel to such a degree he refuses to explain what it was in a coherent manner. He was clear enough on how long it will be before they are in-system.'

'I get the feeling this is where the 88th comes into the picture, sire.'

'Indeed. The estimated time to gather up all of the 88th on board the _Chronos_ is just above two weeks. That includes all armour and support units. It excludes any hangers on and other useless eaters, of course. The trouble is that our pursuers will arrive within that time-frame. It can be safe to assume that they will come with enough fire-power to reduce the _Chronos_ to scrap metal, at least in a fair fight.' The warsmith paused and looked back toward the dimmed screen behind which hid the blue ball of Sycorax.

'We have no idea the true composition of their forces, but something with them is _unnerving_ my warp-counsel. That alone is a bothersome thought...' The colonel said nothing as Todt seemed to ponder the issue with the fearful technomancer. Himself, he could not see the problem. Soldiers were frightened all the time. Courage and deeds of valour came from overcoming that fear.

It took him a while to remember the legends about the Astartes.

They were not only men beyond humanity.

They were also men beyond human emotions.

Emotions like fear.

_And they shall know no fear._

The colonel tried to picture what could frighten an Astartes, especially one such as the technomancer, but he could only come up with bigger, stronger Astartes. The process of imagination made him swallow hard, and the sound of that turned Todt's attention back to him.

'I need you to leave behind one company as bait for these Imperial lackeys, colonel.'

The flatness of the statement snapped the colonel out of his line of thoughts.

'I beg your pardon, sire?' he asked. Had he misheard?

'One company. So that the Imperials are tricked to believe the "heresy" isn't as grave as they think, giving us time to pick off their ships with the _Chronos_.' Todt made a pause. 'You choose yourself.'

The colonel couldn't believe what he was hearing. He had just struggled to save the lives of his soldiers against an uncaring, wasteful Imperium, and they were now going to used as decoys.

He was just about to respond when the warsmith waved him away.

'You are dismissed, colonel. I expect to hear your choice of company to stay behind within the next... what's a good amount of thinking time for a mortal? Half day cycle?'

The colonel bowed stiffly and left the observatorium, leaving the lord warsmith to his musings.

* * *

><p>Corporal Ipswitz was waiting outside of the observatorium, the enormous bulk of another Iron Warrior hovering just behind her. This was one the colonel had not seen before. He was wearing a helmet, the left side of which was covered in optical augments which clicked whirred as they brought the colonel into focus. It gave the colonel the uneasy impression he was being targeted.<p>

'Sir, we need to talk,' Ipswitz began, and then saw the look in her commanding officer's face. 'Uhm, this is Tawreich,' she said, indicating the Astartes behind her. 'He's a havoc, whatever that means. He insisted in coming along.'

'Mortals are not allowed to roam freely on board the _Chronos_,' Tawreich rumbled behind her. 'Move along, both of you. Back to your deck.'

The colonel cupped Ipswitz' elbow, leading her with him as Tawreich herded them back to the mortal's decks.

As soon as they got back to their decks, the colonel took Ipswitz to the side. He had a hunch – a drums' hunch – that she wanted to talk in private about something.

'Let's hear it, Trudi,' he said as they were safely out of ear's shot of anybody else.

'Firstly,' she began, 'I want to apologize for breaking protocol while the officer's were meeting with the warsmith.'

'Breaking protocol?'

'I got nervous. I needed something to occupy my mind.' Ipswitz bit her lip. 'I occupied myself with my vox-set.'

The colonel sighed at that. He took off his helmet and ran a hand through his cropped, dark hair. 'What did you listen in on, Trudi?' He so hoped he wouldn't have to punish the girl. At least not severely. She was skilled with that set and her loss would be acute to the regiment. Which wasn't even touching on his current order from the warsmith.

'The warsmith...'

The colonel gave her a sharp look.

'He sent a data burst! I just happened upon it!' The frantic tone Ipswitz spoke in told the colonel all he needed to know. It had been an accident. But what had she caught? He asked her as much.

'Binary. A burst of binary, so I have no idea what it is, really.'

So that was what the warsmith had sent to Sierck and the enginseers. Of course, the warsmith knowing binary could only mean one thing.

'Our new lord and master,' the colonel mused, half to himself, 'is a former techmarine. Interesting.'

He looked at Ipswitz, who in turn looked apprehensive.

'This is good information, Trudi.'

'So... I won't be punished for this?' She didn't sound too certain she was going to be spared.

'You did break protocol, yes, but considering the circumstances, I am willing to let it pass. Now, could you tell me where Magos Sierck is?'

'I think he's setting up a machine shop of his own in some corner. Not exactly certain where, sir. Hoss would know.'

'Thank you, Trudi.' The colonel put his helmet back on and walked back into the corridor. He turned around to face the vox-corporal one last time. 'And corporal; this will strictly stay between you and me.'

'Yessir!'

* * *

><p>Technomancer Xavier was intrigued by mortals. Their minds, though woefully slow and small at times, contained an amazing spectrum and he could not help himself but adore the way they looped around and swirled in their emotional eddies.<p>

He was standing on a gallery some 30 metres above the hangar that served as the main billet for the 88th Armageddon Steel Legion. He was unseen up in the shadows, seeing the humans mill around like ants below him. They smelled of fyceline and sweat, of gun powder and hormones.

The smells the mortals brought with them no doubt troubled some of his brethren, but not Xavier. He had almost missed having mortals on board the _Chronos_. Of course there were some around, quite a lot in fact; the crew of the large Retaliator-class grand cruiser numbered nearly 100 000 souls, with almost as many servitors. They crew was however an ilk unto their own, and something about them made Xavier doubt they were still wholly mortal.

Xavier realigned his weight and carefully leaned against the railing. The gallery was groaning slightly under the weight of his Terminator armour. He closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, delicately brushing against the humans below him, mindful that he could scar them all if he wasn't careful.

He felt the mind of a man named Isak Brant, an apothecary – doctor, Xavier corrected himself – eager, dutiful and intelligent. Next to him, a captain, Kai Raesch: he too dutiful, but pragmatic and clever.

Not that far from Raesch was a mind Xavier knew: Adalbert Sierck. He didn't dwell on that mind. Xavier had made the mistake of trying to pry deeper into Sierck's mind before. He had only come upon an insurmountable wall of regret.

Xavier left Sierck to whatever he was doing and found others. Most were eager, relieved or slightly apprehensive. He could not blame them entirely for that. How could they know what they had gotten themselves into? Or what was coming?

A flash of pure fury seared through Xavier's mind as one particularly strong will came within range of him.

He opened his eyes and looked towards the source of the anger.

The colonel himself had entered the hold.

Xavier sighed. It would seem the warsmith had not been the most tactful in his orders. Then again, most people that dealt with Warsmith Todt took an instant dislike to him, something that was completely natural considering the circumstances; not that many things on board the _Chronos_ were natural.

Xavier decided to leave the mortals to their doings. The colonel was going to take out his anger on some poor fool – Xavier hoped it to be Sierck – and then he would have to decide which company to leave behind to act as decoy for the Imperial dogs.

Xavier sighed again. There would be less hope on board the _Chronos_ after that was revealed. He had been looking forward to feeling hope again.

It was such a rare emotion.

* * *

><p>The colonel's punch connected with Sierck's chin, sending the magos sprawling backwards. The hard impact hurt his knuckles, but the colonel was silently glad he had managed to hit in the first place, Sierck standing head and shoulders taller than him.<p>

'What was that?' Sierck complained as the gathered himself up, his mechadendrites flailing around trying to find purchase to push him up.

'That,' the colonel said as he shook out the tingling from his fingers, 'was for keeping crucial information away from me, magos.' He walked over to Sierck and hoisted him up to eye-level. The soldiers around had backed off, careful not to get in the way of their enraged commander-in-chief.

'Why did you not tell me what the warsmith sent to you?' the colonel hissed as he pushed his face close to Sierck's.

The magos looked confused for a brief moment until realisation dawned. His face fell.

'I did not think it important, yet. You were still to receive your orders.'

'When were you intending to tell me then?'

'Now?' Sierck squeaked. The colonel nodded.

'He asked me, specifically, to chose one of the enginseers to go with the company you have to pick out!' Sierck's voice was hushed. "It's not a decision I will enjoy. I hardly know them!'

The colonel's reaction to the revelation was to drop Sierck down on the floor. He looked around, appearing to see the gathered soldiers for the first time.

'Get back to your duties!' he roared. 'We still have chimeras, basilisks, hydras and a company's worth of MBTs to get on board! Get a move on, troopers!'

The crowd around him dispersed with a clatter as the soldiers and their officers went back to their assigned duties in stowing the regiment on board the _Chronos_. Without the serfs and hangers-on usually accompanying an Imperial guard regiment, it was hard and slow going, but it had to be done.

The colonel looked back down at Sierck.

'When the warsmith summons us,' he checked his chrono, 'in about 5 hours, you will be coming with me and have an answer to your question as well.' The implied threat in the sentence that if Sierck didn't or had no answer, was plain.

Sierck swallowed.

'Very well, sir.'

* * *

><p>A good half hour before the allotted time ran out, Havoc Tawreich appeared at the colonel's office, saying he was to take the officer to see the lord warsmith. The colonel followed without question or delay, leaving his army roster dataslate lying open on the desk. Sierck was already with Tawreich, having joined up by his own accord. The Astartes gave the magos a suspicious look, but as the colonel made no move to reprimand the machine-man, Tawreich decided that everything was as it should be.<p>

They stepped into the dimmed lighting of the observatorium, which the colonel now guessed was a favourite location on board for the lord warsmith, if a post-human really could have such trivial things. He could not fault it.

Tawreich left them, needing no prompting from his lord.

Warsmith Todt stood watching Sycorax again. He made no attempt to increase the lighting this time, and the colonel guessed it was because they both possessed bionic eyes. At least they shared some common ground, as their creator stood next to the colonel.

'You have reached a decision, colonel?'

It was not quite a question.

'Yes, I have, sire.'

'Let's hear. What company?'

'12th company, under Captain Kai Raesch.'

'Why?'

'They are a mechanised infantry company, with a good mix of anti-infantry and anti-tank weaponry, as well as some artillery pieces. Captain Raesch is also a very resourceful man. I trust him to carry out his duty to the dot. Were I to order him to march into the Eye of Terror, he would. And believe me, Lord Warsmith, he would find a way in!'

Todt actually chuckled, a strange sound, and turned. He did not seem surprised to see Sierck standing next to the colonel.

'I have no doubt. There is a further reason?'

'Yes sire. 12th company were also stationed within a gorge some 1000 kilometres to the north-west of Sycorax City. By my estimate, they would not have the time to fully collect themselves and board the _Chronos_ within two weeks. That is time we do not have. I have, in preparation for this, carefully nudged my ADC to stall any actions pertaining to the orbital transportation of just 12th company, putting focus on the artillery companies 20 through to 27 instead.'

Todt nodded. 'Sound. And what about you, Sierck?'

Sierck gave the colonel an anguished look before replying.

'From what I have learned of the senior enginseers in my weeks with the 88th Steel Legion, my choice for who is to go with 12th company and maintain the sanctity of their vehicles and gear, would fall on Magda Shaern.'

The colonel could not hide his outrage.

'What!'

'I'm sorry, colonel,' Sierck muttered, casting his eyes down, not wanting to meet either his or the warsmith's gaze. 'It is the most logical choice.'

'She's my most senior, most seasoned enginseer!' the colonel hissed.

'A fact the magos no doubt has taken into account, colonel. However, he is the most senior Mechanicus representative on board this vessel. You have no say in matters concerning them.' The warsmith's voice was level, but low. The colonel bit back the urge to point out that Sierck, and his enginseers, were not quite members of the Adeptus Mechanicus any more, seeing as they all now served under the insignia of the eightfold path and not the skull and cogwheel. He was certain the warsmith knew of the discrepancy, but could not shake the feeling he was simply baiting him.

'Very well, sire,' the colonel finally managed.

'You are dismissed,' Warsmith Todt said and turned back to viewing the blue ball of Sycroax.

As the colonel and Sierck came back out into the corridor, to be lead back to the mortals' decks by Tawreich, the colonel could not quite shake the feeling that had creeped through his being as he stood to face Todt. What was it with that man that made him feel such intense loathing for him? Even Sierck had seemed more subdued than anything, and that struck the colonel as highly irregular.

Perhaps he would eventually find out.

Right now, however, he had more pressing concerns.

12th company was to be sent back down, without their morale in tatters, and his most valued enginseer was going with them.

'Frag this shit,' the colonel muttered to himself.


	3. The Last Stand of 12th Company

The Last Stand of the 12th Company

Captain Kai Raesch viewed the large hunk of plastek and metal with a look that could only be described as dubious. It was sitting on his desk like an obese amphibian, leaking oil.

'What is this?' he asked the woman in red robes before him.

Somehow, Lady Enginseer Magda Shaern managed to convey irritation and exasperation at the same time, despite the large respirator mask that covered the lower half of her face.

'It is a fuel-compactor. It is a common component in many designs of prometheum-based combustion engines.' Her reply was slow and deliberate, as if explaining a simple concept to a child. The Captain ignored her tone and pursed his lips in thought instead.

'Why is it on my desk and not in a tank, then?' Raesch replied. 'Leaking oil all over 3rd platoon's munitions report.'

Shaern sighed.

'Because it is broken, captain,' she replied. 'And before you tell me to simply have it replaced, I can't. I have no spares.'

Raesch looked thoughtful for a moment.

'What tank model did it come from?'

'A Chimera Armoured Personnel Carrier. Belonging to 4th platoon, 3rd squad. Manufactory code-'

Raesch held up a hand to stop her. 'I don't need to know all of that, Magda. What's more important is; can you repair this somehow? I need all the transports capable of motivation.'

The mention of her first name made her relax a bit, as much as her mostly bionic body allowed. Shaern was silent as she contemplated and cogitated an answer.

'I see no way the fuel-compactor can be salvaged,' she replied finally. Raesch noted how her powerful three-digit hands knotted themselves around each other. The three mechadendrites that snaked from her back writhed uneasily too.

'You have a way around it, don't you?' he asked.

Shaern nodded slowly. 'There is a way… But it is unorthodox, not to mention outright tech-heresy.'

Raesch leant back in his field chair. He wasn't a large man by any account, small and slight like most Armageddon. His hair was short and mousy, his eyes an unremarkable brown. What had earned him his rank was behind his high-templed brow, though. His brains: they had taken him from the simple place of _frontschwein_ to captain of a company of Steel Legionnaires before his thirtieth birthday; it was what had given both he and his company a reputation of doing things in their own manner, but getting it done; and it was what had landed him with the current assignment.

Captain Raesch was certain that the Colonel had not parted willingly with his Rascals, as the 12th had become known.

He pursed his lips as he considered the enginseer's words.

'Magda, what is this company known as, colloquially?'

Shaern sniffed before she answered. 'The _Rascals_. But why do you-?' The coin dropped for the almost annoyingly literal Mechanicus adept. 'Captain Raesch, you cannot seriously be suggesting I defile another Chimera-pattern tank to get a spare?'

'No, I am suggesting you take a… what did you call it? Fuel-compactor? Take one from a Basilisk out of 18th platoon. They are hardly going anywhere, are they?'

Shaern seemed to fight some inner battle for a moment.

'If I do this, and Mars finds out, I could be declared heretek.'

'Magda, you _were_ present in Sycorax City, were you not?'

Shaern nodded slowly. 'I wish I could forget.'

'As do I, but the die is cast, as the old saying goes. And pray the Machine God is looking the other way.'

Shaern leant forward and lifted the large hunk of metal from Raesch's desk with relative ease. As she went out the command post tent, she turned and looked back at the captain.

'It is not His wrath, I fear, captain. The Machine God lauds ingenuity in the face of limitation or adversity. What I fear is of a more material nature.'

Raesch merely nodded at her. He had begun soaking up the oil leaked on his reports with a handkerchief. 'As do I, Magda. And when it all comes around to it, that is why we are here.' 

* * *

><p>Captain Raesch left his command tent some fifteen minutes later, joined up immediately by his ADC, Sergeant Major Greta Pokowsky. She handed him a dataslate and said by way of explanation,<p>

'Vox transmission, captain. The _Chronos_ has left orbit. It is powering towards the Lagrange jump point beyond the system's fifth planet.'

Raesch nodded solemnly as he speed-read the 'slate. They were now on their own, awaiting what must come following the events on Sycorax.

'I take it you haven't said anything to the lieutenants?'

'I'm not an idiot, sir,' Pokowsky replied, rather cattily. She apologized quickly enough though. 'I'm sorry.'

'It's quite all right, Greta,' Raesch assured her. 'Being on edge is understandable under the circumstances, but using your own reaction as a gauge for how the rest of the company would react, I think we can safely say our situation remains undisclosed to the others.'

They spoke in hushed voices to each other, not that it was needed. The air was full of the bustle and hustle of a major Guard encampment. The many tanks of the company were silent, their engines only turned over occasionally to conserve fuel. By their tents, bivouacked Legionnaires chatted and cooked their evening meal in the gathering dusk. Captain Raesch took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the bracing of the cool mountain air. Not a single one of the Legionnaires were wearing their standard issue rebreathers, dismissing them for the chance to experience the clear, unpolluted atmosphere of Sycorax.

The location of 12th company was a canyon in a mountain range nearly one thousand kilometres north of Sycorax City. The enclosed canyon was large enough to house the nine hundred or so Steel Legionnaires of 12th company along with their tanks and the mobile supplies they had brought with them planetside.

Captain Raesch walked among his troops, Sergeant Pokowsky ambling along with him, giving the occasional encouragement and answering questions where he could. What he would not have done for a priest, but under the circumstances that was _not_ an option. Not at all.

He reflected that it was funny how the sheer size of Armageddon Steel Legions often landed officers of comparatively medium rank such as himself with command over a number of soldiers similar to a small regiment. It meant single regiments could be viewed as armies in their own right and that the officers leading them had to be quite capable.

It also meant a certain level of autonomy for most of the average infantry companies such as 12th, as far as a fully mechanised regiment could be considered average in the Imperial Guard.

Together with the sergeant major, Raesch toured the entire encampment, checking the positioning of the company armour in particular. The valley was a _cul-de-sac_, with only one way out. The way out of the canyon was a broad and fairly easily traversed natural concourse, which made Raesch suspect the gorge was an old glacier-pit, the terraforming of Sycorax into an agri-world having melted any larger masses of ice. A small river still snaked through the bottom of the valley floor, cutting it in half, originating from some spring higher up in the mountains. The canyon was surrounded by steep walls of nearly impassable mountainside. He knew that to be a false impression though, as the steep sides dropped away sharply over the top of the ridge and the riverbed-_cum_-concourse turned sharply to the right as it snaked down the mountain range.

Opposite the entrance Raesch had placed his artillery batteries, consistent mainly of Basilisks and Medusas. In support of them, with a clear line of fire, he had placed the company's Leman Russ MBTs, giving the battle cannons a clear line of sight towards the entryway of the canyon. To provide covering fire for _them_, Raesch had opted to place the complement of Hydra Flak tanks he possessed equally to both sides. With the valley ringed by steep cliffs as it was, air-defence was not a priority, so the Hydras had levelled their massive quad-autocannons and created an overlapping lane of fire designed to stitch the entrance with hypervelocity rounds. The very real possibility of the valley being bombed from above had presented itself to him, but he had dismissed it as under the circumstances irrelevant. As Raesch had not planned on moving the tanks once battle was commenced, the company's Chimera APCs had been placed in a semi-circle to protect the heavier artillery, with the infantry dug in between and behind the tanks. Callous, yes, Raesch was aware of the fact, but they were not going to go forward, and the heavy guns were what would keep them all alive as long as possible.

An old tenet of the Tactica Imperialis wormed its way into Raesch's mind: _Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve._ He just couldn't remember who it had been attributed to.

Sergeant Pokowsky seemed to note Raesch's look as he studied the placement of the Chimeras.

'Whatever tries getting up that gorge will be blown to frak, sir,' she said. Raesch nodded.

'Indeed. My only concern is ammunition.'

Pokowsky made a noncommittal noise. 'Always with the ammo, sir.'

'Don't tell me you can have enough of it.'

The sergeant smiled. 'No, I won't. But it is a litany of yours.'

'That is because you cannot fight wars without ammunition, Greta. Even the most 'slaught-addled scavvie knows that.' Raesch clapped his sergeant on the shoulder and motioned for her to follow him. They had walked the circumference of the encampment, passing an oil-slicked Enginseer Shaern who was muttering something that certainly wasn't binaric machine-benedictions as she fitted a Basilisk's fuel-compactor into 4th platoon, 3rd squad's Chimera. The Chimera's squad was looking on, half-bemused, half-enraptured at the techno-wizardy taking place in front of them. Shaern did not even look up as the captain passed by, and Raesch decided to leave it at that. He needed the enginseer with him for this, and Shaern was known to be difficult to deal with under normal circumstances, only submitting to the will of the Colonel. That she had been "elected" by Magos Sierck to join 12th Company on the surface most likely stung quite a bit, being as it was a death sentence. Raesch had no illusions about Shaern knowing about the true purpose to them being left behind.

As he and Pokowsky made their way to what passed as the field mess for the company officers, Raesch reflected over his own emotions about it. At first, he had felt that strange sense of pride of being selected especially for something that was part and parcel of why the Imperial Guard could issue the orders it did, such as making under-equipped platoons perform suicidal charges against overwhelming odds only to hold the enemy while the rest of the force reformed for a proper counter-attack. But the more he reflected over events, he couldn't shake the feeling that expedience and localisation rather than any actual strategic choice had dictated the Colonel's orders to Captain Raesch to stay behind and act as rear-guard.

And that stung.

But Raesch was a dutiful man if nothing else. As the Colonel commands, he would follow, even unto death. That was what it meant to be a Steel Legionnaire.

_Iron within, iron without._

The words leapt to his forebrain unbidden.

As Raesch settled down by a long-bench in the field mess, his mind was back in the Cathedral of His Divine Light and the grisly sight of Magos Sierck practically flaying a man alive.

Perhaps being left behind as rear-guard was preferable to serving masters such as those, now that the God-Emperor had forsaken those of Armageddon born?

* * *

><p>Thus the nerve-wracking process of waiting began for the 12th company of the 88th Armageddon Steel Legion. Days passed into weeks, and Captain Raesch stopped being concerned over ammunition and started to worry over supplies. Another issue was sanitary conditions when nearly a thousand men and women were cramped together in a space for any longer period of time. Latrines were becoming a serious issue. They still got fresh water from the little mountain spring that ran through the valley, but the water leaving it was anything but pure. The air had gotten chill as well, and Captain Raesch feared what would happen if the spring froze during winter.<p>

It was partly to take his mind of these issues that he ordered a smaller sortie out of the valley to scout out whether the enemy had been made aware of their presence. They were after all bait, and that would be pointless if the enemy were not aware of them.

A few days prior to the sortie, the company voxman, a corporal by the name of Vinkov, had come to the captain claiming to have intercepted vox traffic on the bands reserved for the Church Militant. Of course, their localisation being what it was, the traffic could only have come from something in orbit around Sycorax. When asked about the content of the traffic, Vinkov had shrugged and told the captain that he simply did not have the clearance to decode that kind of traffic. When pressed about 'alternate methods', Vinkov had laughed and said he 'was no Trudi Ipswitz'. Captain Raesch had left it at that.

Instead, he had begun planning the sortie, what squads to bring (Vinkov was a given) and what to do more than have a look around beyond the perimeter he had set up with the company Sentinel walkers further down the riverbed-concourse. A plan had formed and he had gone to Enginseer Shaern to see if it could be realised. When the captain had finished outlining his plan to her, Shaern's brow had wrinkled uncertainly.

'Can it be done, Magda?' Raesch asked, knowing that look all too well by now.

'Technically, yes, it is a small matter,' she replied. She was wringing her bionic hands again. 'There is however the theological matter.'

'The Machine God disapproves?' Raesch couldn't quite keep the scornful tone from his voice, but thankfully the Mechanicus adept missed it.

'In a way, yes. The machine spirits of a voxset and a dataslate do not often agree to have their roles reversed, as it were. A voxset sends and receives signals, obviously in control of this. To give this up to a dataslate's spirit… it would be disagreeable.'

'But it can be done?' Captain Raesch pressed.

Shaern nodded, slightly stiffly. 'Give me a few days, I'll do my best. Though, I must inform the captain that the area of… well, placating machine spirits in communications materiel is not my area of expertise. I tend to the tanks.'

'Whose area would it be?' Raesch asked more out of curiosity than anything else.

'Enginseer Sakkle, I presume, as he tends to the servitors of the regiment. There is some overlap in programming creed between the two.' It was obvious from Shaern's voice that the situation wouldn't have arisen under normal circumstances, that she considered the question flippant and that if the captain had his answers would he please leave her alone? Raesch thanked her for her cooperation and left.

Shaern had stayed true to her promise and managed to rig the voxset that Vinkov carried with him to Captain Raesch's specifications. She'd handed it over on the morning of the sortie, as the captain gave his instructions to the lieutenants of 1st and 2nd platoon, who were going to act as commanders in his stead. Lieutenant Havel had tried to make the case that he should go instead of the captain, on the grounds that the 12th company couldn't stand to lose their commander at a time like this.

'Don't you trust the men and women of my command squad to protect me, Ilya?' Raesch had smiled. The look on Havel's face had been indecipherable, as the lieutenant had tried to come up with something to say that would both express his concern for the captain's safety without dishonouring his comrades-in-arms. Raesch had pre-empted him from saying anything compromising.

'Don't worry. It's a small sortie, and if anybody should do this, it is me. I am responsible for the consequences of this, lieutenant. Me. No one else.'

And with that, Captain Raesch had boarded his command vehicle and the small squad of Chimera APCs had left the valley.

They had passed the perimeter of forward Sentinels, the only trace of the walkers' existence a short, salutary bleep in the vox, riddled with machine code for the weapons systems to identify each other as friendlies. They travelled down the gulch, following the widening stream at the bottom of it for nearly 100 kilometres before Captain Raesch ordered a halt to rest.

'Stay vigilant, soldiers! Take ten to stretch and relieve yourselves,' he ordered as he got out of his own tank. Raesch watched the three squads of veterans he had chosen to accompany him fan out, seemingly chatting idly, but he saw the carefulness of their movements. The auspices in the Chimeras had caught nothing as they slowed down and stopped by the steep wall of the mountain, but you could never be too sure. The vox network was silent too, which was partly why Raesch had ordered the stop. He retrieved a mapslate from his webbing and got back inside his command tank, where Vinkov was waiting.

The voxman had got the command vehicle's powerful communications array up and running, and was busy connecting to the planetary information network. The entire regiment had made use of it to coordinate their work as they cleansed Sycorax of heretic taint, and Raesch found it quite ironic that now they were using that very same network to fool the Imperials.

'Anything?' Raesch asked Vinkov.

'Nothing, sir, not on the standard Church frequencies. Not even anything in code.' Vinkov frowned. 'However…' he began before trailing off.

'However what, corporal?'

'I can connect to the map network without any trouble.'

Raesch nodded. It was as he had expected then. The enemy was clever enough to minimise communication, but they had not changed the codes for access to the global map system. That was exactly what Raesch was after at the moment though. Even with the boosted vox capacity from his Chimera APC, the high mountainsides would prove a severe hindrance to any long range vox communications, unless they sent the signal into space.

So, Raesch reached over and picked out a cable to connect his mapslate to.

'Do you want me to shield the signal, sir?' Vinkov asked.

The question made Raesch pause. He considered the situation. They were trying to attract attention, but the current situation, in a narrow defile like sitting waterfowl should an air wing pass by, was not the most opportune kind.

'Do it,' he said at final.

As Vinkov went to work, Raesch exloaded his position onto the global maps, and then inloaded the map data of the surrounding area. He scrolled around until he found what he was looking for. Vinkov noted what the captain had found.

'If they can't hear it from there, they won't ever hear it,' the corporal said.

'Exactly,' Raesch replied and unplugged the mapslate. He moved out of the Chimera and hollered, 'Mount up! We're moving out!'

* * *

><p>The three Chimeras continued on down the gulch for another five kilometres before Captain Raesch ordered a detour up a narrow side-valley. The path rose sharply and after some time the tanks could no longer climb the steep incline. Raesch ordered a dismount, leaving one squad armed with two meltaguns and an autocannon to provide infantry support for the tanks, as his command squad and the other veteran squad continued onwards and upwards into the mountains. He also instructed Vinkov to bring the backup batteries to his portable vox-set.<p>

It was past noon when the group finally arrived at Captain Raesch's intended target: a wide outcrop of rock that presented a magnificent view of the highlands south of the mountain range and the verdant plains beyond. The rounding of the planet made it impossible to make out Sycorax city far to their south. Raesch saw as some of his soldiers milled about a bit uncertainly and had to smile. Open air was not a proper place for Hivers. He felt it himself. Down in the gulch and back in the valley they camped out in, the high mountainsides provided at least the sense of their being some sort of roof. On the outcrop, there was nothing like that, just a very long drop and a sudden, messy stop if you stumbled over the edge. True, Hive Infernus had not been without its apparently bottomless chasms, but they at least had a ceiling.

Raesch tapped Vinkov on the shoulder and indicated for him to follow. The veteran squad had fanned out and established a perimeter without even being ordered.

Raesch and Vinkov approached the edge of the outcrop warily. The captain looked about and then ordered Vinkov to lump his voxset on the ground before them. Vinkov did as ordered and started to connect the voxset to the backup batteries as Captain Raesch pulled out a dataslate from one of his many fatigue pockets.

'So, Magda is sure this'll do the trick?' Vinkov said after a moment of rigging the batteries in the manner the enginseer had explained to him. To maximise the power output of the six backup batteries available, without compromising longevity too much, Enginseer Shaern had suggested three batteries in a serial connection, paired together in a parallel. The look the captain had given her made the enginseer suggest he'd call for Vinkov and let her explain to the voxman instead.

'That's Enginseer Shaern to you, corporal, but yes, she is. They'd have to be, as you said, deaf to miss it now.' Raesch looked down at his dataslate. It contained nothing but scrapcode, some of it mildly hostile, and Shaern had been even more reluctant about doing that than jury-rigging the Chimera a few weeks hence. 'The real question is whether they will take the bait?'

Vinkov looked up at his commander as he finished with the batteries. 'If they're who we think they are, sir, they will.'

'You think so, corporal?' Raesch couldn't help but think that his enemy somehow would outsmart them. 'One well-placed wing of Marauders, and we'd be cooked grox.'

Vinkov gave him a funny look, seemingly wondering if his captain was testing him in some manner or if he genuinely had second thoughts about his own plan. 'Then they wouldn't get any prisoners, sir.'

'Why would they want us as prisoners, Vinkov? We never took any when we cleansed Sycorax.' Raesch handed the dataslate to Vinkov for him to connect to the rigged voxset.

'Well,' Vinkov said tentatively, 'if I was them, I'd want an answer to why this mess became the mess it is.' He shrugged as he finished the set up. 'It's what they do after all, isn't it?'

'The Church isn't known for being the inquisitive types,' Raesch quipped with a lopsided smile. 'Though, I can see your logic, corporal. I reason by it too: they would want someone to explain why all this is.'

Vinkov did not reply immediately. Instead, he flipped a switch that made the voxset go _bleep_ and then a small green light began winking on and off on its side. He looked at it approvingly before fishing out a dataslate of his own from his fatigues.

'I had a go at some of the Church broadcasts I'd picked up, trying to decipher some of it, sir,' Vinkov said by way of explanation. 'No real luck, but I did decode the header. Everything else is code magenta.' He handed the dataslate to Captain Raesch, who simply stared at the header on the dataslate and remained silent.

'You're right, sir. The Church isn't very inquisitive. But the Inquisition is.'

* * *

><p>The trip back to camp had been as uneventful as can be, even if Vinkov's revelation had been a bit shocking to the captain. The voxman was circumspect enough to let sleeping dogs lie, and the captain's temporary loss of cool over the news was never mentioned.<p>

Four days later, things got interesting. Vinkov had picked up sporadic bursts of vox-traffic – using the heavy-duty vox-mast of the company command Chimera – but on the fourth day the ether went frantic with activity. He couldn't decode even a small part of it all, but the sheer level of activity was interesting to Captain Raesch.

_They're up to something,_ he thought as he reviewed another slate detailing the frankly dreadful supply levels. _I would wager my captaincy that they've discovered the beacon. So, come on then._

As Raesch finished up the morning's reports, he began what had become a disturbingly familiar cycle as he walked the encampment grounds. Nerves were fraying throughout the company, the platoon commanders doing their best to hold the men and women of 12th company together. Raesch had the creeping suspicion that the only thing keeping them still in their places was partly their localisation, partly the iron discipline drilled into them not just by the Hive Commissariat back on Armageddon, but by the Colonel himself.

Captain Raesch knew he was not quite the inspirational leader the Colonel was, but he knew his soldiers, and as he walked the camp, talking to them, listening to their fears, resolving minor spats with even-handed objectivity, he entertained the thought that if nothing else, he would do the Colonel proud with his actions here. The last few days had begun to lodge doubts in his mind, doubts he couldn't allow himself. The events in the Cathedral crept back to him, forcing him awake at night. Yet what other future did the 88th Steel Legion have? To simply lie down and die was not an option. It went against every fibre of his being.

Never mind that the unofficial motto of the 88th had become "Colonel command, we follow" in reflection to their diligence to duty and the chain of command.

No, Captain Raesch would not be found wanting in this hour of need, no matter the personal strain it put upon him or his company.

Yet for all that, he could not bring himself to confirm the suspicion every soldier had written in their eyes: that this would be the last stand of the 12th company of the 88th Armageddon Steel Legion.

* * *

><p>The waiting game was made for another nerve wracking week before the forward Sentinels reported movement in the vale. Even as he walked out into the camp, Vinkov by his side, and ordered the entire company to stand to and prepare for the coming attack, Raesch was secretly grateful the final stretch had come.<p>

In the past days, Vinkov had not been able to pick up any off world communication, meaning that the global info-net had been shut down to them. The lack of information in the development had seemingly annoyed the voxman as much as the captain.

The sudden silence from the posted Sentinels was not as welcome, but predicted. It meant two things to Captain Raesch: that the scouts had fought to the last instead of retreating, just as ordered; and that the main body of the company had roughly an hour before whatever was coming up the valley arrived in the gorge.

Raesch had an idea of the size of the force, but the communications of the Sentinels had been fraught with static. The sky was clear, so Raesch guessed at some sort of scrambling device being employed.

Not that it mattered. He had all he needed to know. After the Sentinels went silent, he knew the exact location of the enemy force. It was marching up a wide gorge with little cover to be found. He reached for Vinkov's voxcaster and the corporal tuned it to a specially set frequency.

'Sergeant Pokowsky, do you read me? Over.' Raesch asked.

'Clear enough, sir,' the reply crackled back. 'Over.'

'The Sentinels have fallen. The word is given, and the word is Hades. Over.'

'Affirmative. Over and out.'

Raesch looked up and out over his forces, before switching to the companywide vox channel.

'All platoons: this is the Captain. Protection protocol in effect. Prepare for sustained Earthshaker barrage. I repeat: prepare for sustained Earthshaker barrage.'

* * *

><p>On the sheer bluffs of the valley, hidden in a nook and with a clear line of sight down at the approaching enemy marching up the vale, Sergeant Major Greta Pokowsky unlimbered the range finder. Her soldiers were hunkered next to her, having been supplied before the sortie with an extra compliment of autocannons and plasma guns. They had their orders, as did Pokowsky.<p>

She sighted the range finder towards the middle of the advancing mass of silver armoured infantry and boxy Rhino hull vehicles. It was not going to be hard to hit anything, even for indirect firing Basilisks. Even so, she decided to seek out someone who looked important. She depressed the range finder's trigger and a beam of infrared light measured range and a powerful pulse-vox started relaying information back to the massed Basilisk batteries in the camp.

She had accepted her orders gladly, volunteering for the position - as had her team - never mind that Captain Raesch had made it blatantly clear that they would probably not survive retaliation from the enemy. She did not care, considering what had been done to her family back on Armageddon.

A well of emotion started to flood up in her, as she thought of what the Colonel had told the regiment as they had gathered in Sycorax arena; of the massive betrayal wrought upon the people of Armageddon. She felt her eyes watering from emotion, blurring her vision, but it didn't matter. The target was set. The enemy would discover the source mere seconds after she depressed the trigger, but it did not matter.

A low rumble and throb passed through the rock, and Pokowsky's men and women opened fire to stall the enemy. A split second later, the response came with boltgun and multimelta. One of the autocannon teams was killed by the initial wave of fire, but it did not matter.

'This is for my dear Mats, you bastards,' Pokowsky growled as a high pitched whistling filled the air.

The high-yield explosive shells of the Earthshaker cannonade struck the column of power armoured warriors, causing horrible damage. Screams of very human pain, shrill and warbling, mixed with the mechanical whistle of falling shells. Armour fragments, rock and limbs flew through the air in almost lazy arcs as the shells exploded amongst the Imperials.

Pokowsky did not get to enjoy the results. One of the Rhino-variants fired its turret mounted multimeltas at the remaining Steel Legionnaires and vaporised them.

* * *

><p>'Contact lost with ranging team,' Vinkov reported, rather unfeelingly in Raesch's opinion. Then again, they were committed now. The Basilisks had fallen silent, their payload of ammunition expended before the barrels could overheat. Hopefully it would be enough.<p>

Raesch checked himself. Enough for what? To stop the oncoming storm? No, they could not. But maybe it would be enough to buy the Colonel and the Warsmith the time they needed to escape. Raesch pushed his doubts from his mind, and focused on the mission he had set himself.

At best, the barrage had bought them several hours, perhaps as much as half a day, but Raesch couldn't be certain. The company now had no links of communication outside of the encampment. He was to all intents blind and deaf, but even such a handicapped man could still _feel_ the vibrations of ground and air.

'Corporal Vinkov, your set,' Raesch said and turned to the voxman. Vinkov handed him the handset with a questioning look. 'Companywide channel, Vinkov.' The corporal nodded and switched channel.

'This is Captain Raesch to all platoons of the 12th company. Preparatory positions. Stand by to receive enemy assault. Siege patrol doctrine in effect. Lieutenants, sergeants, you know your orders. Soldiers, remember:' Raesch paused. This was usually where the blessing went. But from his tours of the camp the last few weeks, he had become convinced that no one, not a single soul of the 12th company, believed that the Emperor protected anything. He licked his lips as the answer came to him.

'Remember Armageddon. Even unto death, we shall be iron within.'

A bone-vibrating loud reply of 'Iron without!' echoed from nearly one thousand throats in answer to Raesch's words.

Kai Raesch couldn't help the lop-sided smile that crept across his face. Not so much for the answer, but that it had felt so _right_.

* * *

><p>In the end, it turned out the Basilisk barrage had been very effective in delaying their enemies. Raesch and the platoon commanders along with the sergeants had begun dealing with fraying nerves and disciplinary infractions when the cry went up from the front ranks of the encamped company.<p>

The first glimpse of the enemy was a large fleshy mass of bellowing madness. They bounded towards the 12th on stimm-fuelled legs, whipping coils of electro-flails around themselves as they charged. Raesch recognised arco-flagellants when he saw them.

A split second after the combat-servitors appeared the chatter of autocannon and _hiss-crack_ of lasgun filled the valley. His company needed no orders to fire upon an obvious enemy. The unarmoured arco-flagellant-wave was easy pickings, but they were hard to bring down due to their drug-addled state. They bounded on, heedless of their losses, most likely not even aware of them, their numbers reduced to a scant few by the time they reached the first line. Raesch heard the cry of Sergeant Kurova over the vox as she ordered her squad to fall back. He also heard her fall silent suddenly, not that he had needed to. His position at his command Chimera gave him a good view of the valley and its narrow entrance.

The enemy second wave came then. Silver-armoured Rhino-hull tanks armed with multimeltas and heavy flamers rolled into view, power armoured warriors advancing at a swift pace behind them. Raesch was on the verge to snatch the voxset from Vinkov when an eye-searing white beam flashed through the valley, hitting one of the Rhino-variants square on. Several more followed, as the other Leman Russ Annihilators of Lieutenant Cliever's armoured platoon opened up on the approaching tanks. The first row of Rhino-variants went up in glorious displays of fire, but Captain Raesch had little time to rejoice. From behind the tanks, power armoured soldiers took to the sky on jump packs. As the silver warriors descended, they opened fire with twin-wielded bolt pistols and hand flamers. From behind the exploded line of Rhino-tanks, more of the silver enemy appeared, carrying meltaguns and flamers. The lascannons of Cliever's tanks flashed again, but hitting a tank is an easier task than a dodging soldier. The enemy, made aware of the threat the Leman Russes posed, diverted their meltagun-armed infantry towards them.

Now Raesch snatched the voxset from Vinkov.

'Lieutenant Grueber, meltagunners at your two o'clock!'

'I see them, captain,' was Grueber's simple reply.

The Hydra-battery placed nearest to Cliever's Leman Russes levelled their quads and opened up on the approaching infantry. The tanks were too tightly packed to allow for much movement, a risk that Raesch knew and had weighed into his plans and positioning. But with so many rounds blasted your way, there was simply no way that a handful of warriors would survive to pose a serious threat to his tanks, even if they were wearing power armour.

The captain diverted his attention from the Hydras on his right to the valley entrance. The enemy had managed to push some of its armour into the gorge, using the still-burning wrecks of their own as cover from the barrage of battlecannon shell and lascannon fusillade. The last of the arco-flagellants had finally been cut down, but the jump pack equipped warriors were amongst his soldiers now. And they were proving hard to stop.

Raesch bit his lower lip as he considered his next course of action. The front was wavering now and pressure was high, but just maybe it could be held. A tiny thread of hope decided to form in his heart.

'Sir!'

Vinkov's voice snapped Raesch's attention and the corporal pointed towards where Lieutenant Cliever's tanks were.

Or had been. A collection of smouldering wrecks were now cover for the group of power armoured warriors with meltaguns. Only one of them was down, lying broken on the ground, silver armour stained with red. Through the shock of having lost an armoured platoon of Leman Russes, Raesch wondered how the enemy could possibly have survived the barrage from Grueber's Hydras.

As he thought about that, one of them sighted around the corner of a burning tank and blasted apart a Hydra, its companions providing covering fire with bolt pistols against Steel Legionnaires trying to flush them out with autocannon and lasgun. His soldiers' attempts proved ineffectual, and soon the Hydras of Grueber's squadrons had joined Cliever's in death. The attention of the meltagunners in the enemy squad shifted from the tanks to Lieutenant Gleiwitz's platoon on Raesch's right flank. The captain hoped they could hold them off.

Raesch however had no time to worry about five enemy infantry. His attention went back to the entrance. With Cliever and Grueber out of the equation, that meant that the pressure upon the valley entrance had slackened. More enemies were pouring in through the gap, putting pressure on the already beleaguered ranks of Legionnaires. Raesch saw how the jump pack infantry of the enemy burned their way through Lieutenant Havel's platoon. Havel had insisted on being in the first line, despite Captain Raesch's advice against it. Raesch had gone so far as considering ordering Havel to stand down, but had decided against it. In the end, he realised he had no other lieutenant that he would rather see hold the first line. Havel was doing an admirable job, however, paying the enemy back with blood for every single Armageddon life they took. He saw Havel brandish that old chainsword of his, taking off the head of the enemy squad leader in a spray of gore.

Havel spun on his heel, facing the enemy, only to catch a bolt to his chest from the advancing enemy infantry. The remains of 1st platoon soon joined him and Raesch felt the tiny spark of hope he had allowed himself go out.

The tipping point had been reached.

As another wave of jump pack-equipped infantry slammed down right in the middle of Raesch's second rank of Guardsmen, he almost felt the world turn on its axis.

The battle was no longer for any kind of survival for the 12th. This was now a last stand in every sense of the word.

The front rank unravelled quickly then. Raesch finally identified exactly what his enemy was. He knew these warriors and his heart sank. He had met them going to temple on occasion, and his father had informed him that they were the Brides of the Emperor, His most devoted Daughters, His most fervent Warriors.

The Adepta Sororitas. And they would stop at nothing until their enemy was dead and its taint removed.

Raesch realised he was still holding the vox-receiver. Vinkov looked to him and the captain imagined his entire company doing exactly the same in that moment.

_Iron within_, Raesch thought.

'Repel them! Throw them back! Kill the whores!' Raesch bellowed into the vox. 'Send them back crying for _their_ Emperor! Remember Armageddon!'

Raesch let go of the voxset and unholstered his own bolt pistol. It was time to join the fray himself, as the entire battle line now was beyond salvage. There was nothing he could do now as a company commander, beyond being seen by his soldiers and instil them with courage as they fought to the last.

'Vinkov, with me!' Raesch ordered as he stepped away from his command position. He dared a look to his right and saw to his relief that Gleiwitz had held up fairly well under the circumstances. The flanking operation of the Battle Sisters had failed and Gleiwitz was now having his troopers add their fire power in repelling the waves coming through the gorge.

Several of the enemy tanks had managed to push through, and despite the relatively short range of their anti-tank weaponry in comparison to that of Raesch's company, they had managed to put serious dents into his armour. Cliever and Grueber were not the only platoon commanders out of the game. As Raesch checked his left flank, he saw the other line of Hydras go up. He could not immediately identify the source, but it soon revealed itself as another unit of jump pack equipped Sororitas appeared from behind the tanks. They were carrying bolt pistols and hand flamers and stormed the nearest platoon of Steel Legion. Raesch identified them as being part of 4th platoon, those of the jury-rigged Chimera.

That same Chimera now opened fire with its turret mounted heavy flamer. At first, Raesch thought the warrior nuns had perished in the flames, only to see them emerge as fiery streaks of blackened armour seconds later, barely impeded in their jump pack boosted charge. They slammed into the ranks of 4th platoon's command squad, setting them afire not just with their own hand flamers, but their very armour.

One of the Sororitas detached herself from the slaughter of 4th platoon and made for the row of tanks behind them. The armour had ceased firing for the most now, the crews hesitant to fire on their own. Raesch instinctively made a mental note to discipline the armoured platoon commanders later, ignoring the plain fact there was no _later_ for the 12th company.

The lone Sister weaved incoming streamers of fire from heavy bolter and lasguns in a display of agility Raesch found highly admirable. She readied something in her hands and pulled her right arm back as she neared the line of Chimeras.

She was suddenly slammed sideways as Enginseer Shaern barrelled into her, the two women rolling to the ground. Over the din of battle, Raesch thought he heard a highly irritated buzz of binaric code and something in plain Gothic about _my babies _and _whore_.

Confident that Magda Shaern could handle herself, he returned his attention to the battle. Insofar he had passed unnoticed by the enemy. The Battle Sisters had broken his lines and battle was turning into the confused mess of close quarter's mêlée. Everywhere he looked, he saw his soldiers cut down by silver-clad warrior women. Chests exploded from precisely placed bolts. Throats where opened by sarissa and bayonet, and painted grey tunics and silver plate alike a uniform ruddy brown.

Raesch decided to move in and try to hold the centre of the valley, assisting what he figured were the remains of 6th and 8th platoons. They were doing a fine job of it, having barricaded themselves around the burning wrecks of their APCs. The pattern the destroyed tanks formed indicated to Raesch that the tank commanders had repositioned themselves against his own explicit orders, to give the infantry a better chance of survival. He also figured he could have a small chance of reorganising the defence into something coherent from such a position.

Raesch dodged and ducked his way to the make-shift barricade, loosing the odd shot of his bolt pistol as he advanced. He was nowhere near as nimble as the Battle Sister he'd seen Magda take down. As he reached the perimeter, Raesch turned around to ask Vinkov for the vox-set, only Vinkov wasn't there.

Raesch visually retraced his steps and soon saw what he had feared to find: Vinkov's bloodied corpse, on its back in the dirt. Something about the angle the man had fallen gave Raesch chills; Vinkov looked as if his back had exploded and his legs subsequently folded underneath the body weight.

'Captain!'

Raesch turned at the voice and saw Lieutenant Below, commander of 8th platoon. 'Yes, lieutenant?' he said. His own voice sounded so hollow.

Below's brow furrowed. 'We're being surrounded, sir. Orders?'

Raesch looked back out beyond the barricade. They were being surrounded. As he scanned around, he saw how Enginseer Shaern was busy caving in the head of the Sororita she was fighting using a length of iron pipe, probably from one of the tanks. Shaern's fury was cut short as a red beam of plasma stabbed into her back and out of her chest. A sudden shriek of white noise howled over the ether and Raesch tore out the ear-piece of his personal vox. He saw Magda keel over and then her killer advancing from behind her.

'Sir?' Below repeated.

_Iron within, iron without._

'We go out the way the Colonel would have wanted us to, Nicolas,' Raesch said. He couldn't tear his eyes off Magda's killer. _So that is what justice looks like?_

'To the last breath?'

'To the last breath,' Raesch repeated.

* * *

><p>The last stand of Captain Kai Raesch and the combined might of 6th and 8th platoon lasted all of fifteen minutes; the time it took for the Battle Sisters to identify their barricades for what they were and have one of their anti-tank squads form up and pummel the Chimera hulls with multimeltas. Rather than being cooked alive or crushed by molten sheets of armaplas, Captain Raesch led the remains of the platoons in a last desperate sally, bayonets fixed.<p>

It was madness, it was folly, but when all other options had been taken away from you; when all sense had left the field, only madness remained.

They were cut down with contemptible ease by their enemy, and Raesch felt something clip his helmeted head. The next moment he was on his back, looking up at the reddening sky. He could feel something wet against the back of his head, but he couldn't decide if it was sweat or blood. His nose had given up trying to make sense of the smells of the battlefield long ago. It was just this repulsive mush in his sinuses now.

His view was obscured by a monster in silver. She was huge, easily up towards two metres tall, but it was hard to tell from his prone position. Black beads looped around her gorget and vambraces, along with a multitude of purity seals. The face was obscured by a featureless helm with burning red lenses. Raesch half-expected them to glow from the hate with which the monster regarded him.

'_Sic haereticorum_,' the monster rumbled in High Gothic. It lowered its bolt pistol at his face.

'_Fick dich,_' Raesch replied in the gutter tongue of his home hive.

The bolt pistol boomed.

* * *

><p>Interrogator Michael du Val walked through the steaming battlefield. Temperature was dropping rapidly as evening approached and the many, many dead heretics were cooling. Soon enough they would be heated up once more, as the Battle Sisters of the Order of the Argent Shroud built a pyre of them to the God-Emperor's glory.<p>

Yet he couldn't ignore that he had been sent here with express orders to find out what had happened on Sycorax. After having seen the state of Sycorax City and the Cathedral of His Divine Light, the lady inquisitor had been very keen indeed in sorting out what had driven the 88th Armageddon Steel Legion to murder the entire population of a backwater agri-world. When their vox-thieves had picked up the signal from the mountains, they had feared a trap, but opted to investigate despite it all. They had tried to reconnoitre the ranges using aircraft, but failed to turn up anything.

It left them with precious little but to swallow the obvious bait and see what would happen.

Canoness Nazerine had been very keen on taking the fight to the genocidal heretics, a drive that had only been further fanned as the Earthshaker barrage had dropped on them.

He saw her then, holstering her bolt pistol as her sisters-in-arms went about the holy work of building the pyres and granting the Emperor's mercy to those willing to surrender.

Du Val couldn't have that. He and his mistress needed someone to interrogate about all this.

He came up to her and saw the corpse at her feet. Du Val identified the corpse as a captain by the pips on its collar. The head had been completely blown apart by the powerful bolt.

'That one could've been useful, you know,' he said without preamble.

'At what? Spreading his filth?' The canoness' voice was distorted and gravelly, filtered through her helm's external vox unit.

Du Val gave the two metre tall woman a meaningful look. She towered over him by a head, but he wouldn't let himself be intimidated. She reached up and removed her helmet, revealing a homely face, criss-crossed with the scars of a life-time of warfare. Her ash-grey hair was cropped short.

'Well?' she asked, her unmodulated voice deep even without the vox's help. 'You know I am correct, interrogator.'

'To a certain extent, yes,' du Val began. 'But Lady Inquisitor de la Gardie also instructed me to bring back someone – preferably more than one – for interrogation. It is in His most Holy Inquisition's interests to find out just what happened here on Sycorax.'

Nazerine gave him a level stare. 'Then I suggest you hurry and pick one, interrogator. My sisters are pious and eager to repay the heretic scum for what they did to us, and to the population of this blessed planet.' She paused. 'If you are real quick, you might even bag two!'

Du Val saw the mischievous glint in the eyes of the middle-aged Sororita, cursed and walked off.

As du Val made his pick from the clutches of the – in his personal opinion – fanatical and pyromaniac Sisters, he couldn't shake the feeling that they had overlooked something.

The Lady Inquisitor and he had missed something crucial and he couldn't put his finger on what. He shrugged to himself. That was, after all, what the impeding interrogations would be all about:

What would make a Steel Legion murder the entire population of a planet?


End file.
